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A 

SHEPHERD 

OF KENSINGTON 


By Mrs, Baillie Saunders 
n 


Paul R. Reynolds 
New York 
1907 






a 




UttrtAKY of CONGRESS 
iwo Oooles Received 

OCT 9 ' SOf 

^Copyneht Entry 
Oc+ R> iq«7 
CLASS A XXc., No, 

\K% 06f 

COPY B. 


Copyright, 1907, 

AS 

Mrs. Baillie Saunders. 


A Shepherd of Kensington 


CHAPTER I 

*’{ WANT to see Mr. Cartyn,” said the lady imperiously, as she 
wriggled up from a half-kneeling posture and collected by des- 
])erate seizings innumerable small bags, books, manuals, purses, 
and muff-chains. 

1 he verger paused and looked scornful, but unspeakably re- 
signed. 

“The service is over, mum,” he said, rattling a key-pocket in 
his shabby Geneva gown, and pulling a fringe of white hair 
under his shaven chin, a last stubbly reminiscence of the “New- 
gate” pattern. He was of ancient institution. 

“1 know that,” said the lady sharply. “I stayed till all the 
people went, on purpose, as 1 wish to see him quite privately.” 
Her eyes sparkled determination. 

“I’ll sec whether he ain’t gone,” said the verger thoughtfully, 
thumbing a wax taper that he held, and examining a crack in it 
which caused it to hang its slender head down out of its holder 
like a limp signal-post, just as though he had never seen such 
a thing before. 

“Well, please be (|uick,” said the lady, while with one hand 
she fumbled at an opulent-looking beaded or rather jewelled bag. 
The action had stimulation in it. 

“He’s maybe just staying to sign some marriage sustihkits, 
said the verger in a kinder tone than before. “Tf I said it was 
7'cry particular ” 

There was a chink of coins, and suddenly one found itself 
absorbed with grace into the folds of the Geneva gown, and 
away whisked the verger through the drear grey-blue morning 
light towards the vestry, a new swagger in his old shoulders, 
clanking on the flags as he went. 

fl'he lady sat and waited, chinking her uncountable little dan- 


4 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


gling things and minute beaded possessions, and fidgeting suf- 
ficiently to make several quite loud little frou-frous of the silk in 
her attire, which shot into the silent air with quite an effect of 
importance. 

The service was just over, a weekday morning service in Lent 
in a church quite accurately described as "fashionable, and 
known as St. Chad’s, South Kensington ; and a large crowd of - 
people had filed out of the building at the conclusion of the 
office, a crowd mainly composed of women, most of them of more 
or less well turned out appearance. 1 his lady, in her corner, had 
remained since then without moving more th^n she could help 
she was always on a little running move like corn with the wind 
on it, or a fussy beck on a gusty morning. She now rose up at 
the verger’s beckoning, and went after him into the Tudor arch 
of the vestry door. 

The vicar was busy writing at a table as she entered. He rose 
up at once and came towards her, gravely courteous, but clearly 
’••ot cordial. He seemed to have plenty of business of his own, 
and his manner was expressive of a desire to hurry these tire- 
some applications on one side. He evidently found his power 
a nuisance in this way : surely, he seemed to be saying impa- 
tiently to himself, these good ladies could get all they wanted in 
church without following him in here. He was a neat, rather 
smart-looking man. of niedium height and very thin, with plain 
features shown sharply out of a thin, narrow face, and possess- 
ing the strange incongruity of a very boyishly shaped head going 
prematurely grey about the temples. He had an odd, almost 
mahogany-coloured skin, and a tightly shut mouth. His only 
good features were that and his blue eyes ; otherwise he was 
distinctly plain, and rather irritatingly self-confident in manner 
with more the air of a man conducting a brisk business than a 
spiritual adviser. 

“I want your advice,” said the lady bluntly. 

“Yes ?” he began. 

“Spiritual,” said the lady, taking the offered seat. "A fault — 
a — a — a sin committed,” she continued, fumbling again amongst 
her muflf-chains and manuals and bead bags, this time in real 
confusion, but creating an odd air of flippancy by her jingles. 

He looked politely displeased, and, clearing his throat, spoke 
in a voice sounding faintly like a chant. 


A SHEPHERD OF KEXSIXGTC^X 


5 


“If there is any help 1 can give you ’’ he began again, and 

pushed aside his papers with hnality. He was about thirty-hve 
a fairly young man for a vicar, and had only cpiite recently ac- 
quired the important living he now held, and was at the time 
deep in several of the puzzles that beset the orthodox and eager 
and young and tidy in an overwhelmingly disordered and con- 
fusing world. One was, certainly, his duty with regard to the 
fashionable women who Hocked to his church, and whose puz- 
zling ethics necessarily bewildered a man fresh from the cut- 
and-dried metaphysics of Oxford and the comparatively simpD 
troubles of the poor. He had had ten years in the slums, and was 
not married. How little, then, could he know of the human 
nature that mattered to his country ! '1 his lady was certainly 

one of a type that he felt obliged to consider, as it was con- 
stantly troubling his path. He took it str.c.iy as a penance, with 
some impatience, not unnatural. She was young as women go 
now — over thirty, and tall and largely made, with handsom<“ 
curtly cut features, golden-brown hair, and tine eyes spoilt by 
some temper and more good living, and a complexion certainly 
suffering from a tendency to mauvy-red and puffiness due to the 
same unromantic cause. A little less of her would have been 
an advantage ; otherwise she was certainly pretty, and appeared 
to know it. The vicar hardly got all this in detail, but he got 
its effect which is the same, or a better thing : he also got a 
little thrill of distaste from the lady’s dres;^, which can only be 
described as a sort of Lenten coquetry — rich purple, most sweep- 
ingly made, with many sable furs and ornaments and a toque of 
violets. An amethyst cross rested cn her breast, symbolical of 
the whole. 

“Would you like to speak to me now,’’ he said, “or make an 
appointment for some other time? I am afraid 1 am due at a 
committee meeting in twenty minutes. But .still ” 

“Ob no, now please,” said the lady. “If 1 don't say it now I 
never shall. I’ve been coming to these nice mission services 
and things, and have really felt all sorts of things — good things — 
ideas, you know, that I never had before. Of course, it’s very 
tiresome. 1 hese notions — well, one gets them, only they don f 
last. Well, p'raps it would be a bore if they did. Xo one decent 
would really invite one, would they? One would get a name 
for being solemn. And when I smell incense I do feel so — so. 


6 


A SllKPHERl) OF KENSINGTON 


oh lovely. And 1 read heaps of little books with such nice, 
sweet, impossible sort of ideas in them, the sort of things you 
would do willingly if you were in a book, only that wouldn t go 
down in your set, you know. Haven’t you — no, I suppose 
clergymen haven’t — but hasn’t one to consider ones set? Isn t 
that duty to one’s neighbours and so on? It must be. Really, 
life is very puzzling.” 

“And you want me to give you some particular advice?” said 
Cartyn, trying to keep to the point and glancing furtively at his 
watch. 

“Well. yes. 1 suppose you would call this confession — or 
wouldn’t you?” 

“I suppose any unburdening of a troubled mind in the sincere 
desire to do better is confession.” 

“Oh. well, this thing bothers me,” said the lady; “and I love 

your sermons so ” The vicar raised a hand. “And all these 

dear charming services, where one can get such really nice feel- 
ings. have made me feel much more uncomfortable about it, 
though it’s really what lots of women do every day of their 
lives. 1 expect crowds of my friends have done it to me; Fve 
no doubt I’ve suffered for it over and over again. I don’t know 
why I came here now about it except that it’s a bother to me. 
:!nd makes me unlucky at bridge. And when I really try to be 
like those little books, it gets between me and the altar-lights in 
a quite horrid way. and makes me hate the frumps who sing so 
loud in church because no doubt they have nothing unpleasant 
on their consciences. It’s odd how that makes one hate them.” 

The vicar, after one keen glance at her, had now turned his 
chair and seated himself sideways to the lady with his elbow 
resting on the table and his hand up to his face, in order that he 
should not appear to study her. or embarrass her by an intru- 
sion of his own personality or regard. 

“Pray speak out. Do not think you need to reason with,” he 
said it almost awkwardly, “with your Heavenly Father. Tell 
the fact, if ‘it troubles you. and we will see, you and I together, 
what can be done.” Some of the haste of his manner had gone 
and now his coldly impersonal tone calmed the fidgeting lady. 

“Well, then,” she said in a lower voice, “as a matter of fact 
it is a— well a scandal. A very bad scandal. I ])ractically in- 
vented it. Oh. I don’t say there wasn’t ground for it — or, rather 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSIXGTOX 


7 


she was indiscreet. But I did it because — well, because 1 wai 
jealous^ But it’s this way, 1 only meant it to go so far; but— 
well, it’s gone dreadfully far. Oh, I can’t, I won't, think how far 
It’s done for her heaps of harm. It makes me hate her and 
myself too — she’s like a ghost : we’re both like ghosts ! 1 feel 

mad to get away from both of us, and 1 don't much care which 
I hurt. I’ve come here to hurt myself, for a change from her. 
1 feel as if I’d stuck a knife into her and must now stick one 
into myself. Oh, why are things so difficult?” 

“You say,” said Cartyn gravely, “that you brought a scandal 
against a friend? Was it a friend?'’ 

“Yes, sort of. Yes, till I hated her — then she was an enemy.” 

“Why did you hate her?” 

“Oh well, why? — Because she was so pretty in a sort of horri- 
bly superior way, and every one fell in love with her, even the 
man I cared about. That was really why I did it.” 

The lady was fidgeting with her rings and breathing quickly. 

“And what did you do?” 

“Well, you see, she married him; the man I mean. It was 
out in India — Bahore — where he had a Government post. 1 was 
living at the same place — I must tell you 1 am the widow of an 
officer — because my late husband had been stationed there when 
he died, and I remained there amongst my large circle of friends. 
We led a gay life, this man was quite mine — that is, we were 
almost engaged, and he would have married me, when she came 
along. She was quite young — a mere girl — people called her 
beautiful; she was decently born, but she had no money or any- 
thing, but he fell in love with her, though he was old cnougli 
to be her father. He threw me quite on one side and married 
her. He had never been strong, and after his marriage his 
health gave way altogether, and he gradually became a confirmed 
invalid. He used to take morphia — you know what those tropical 
climates are ; and you may perhaps know how easy it was to 
make a man under those circumstances jealous and suspicious." 

“Of his wife?” said Cartyn. 

“Yes — his young wife. You see, she was a beauty, and you 
know what India is for young and pretty women! He was 
rich and had many friends, but his illness cut him off from them 
bit by bit — only not his wife. He had an idea that she ought 
to go into society all the more because he couldn’t, to represent 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


liim, you sec? Siie did. And then was my chance. I was an 
oid friend, his old sweetheart, really. I expect clergymen think 
nothing of these things, but they matter very much to real peo- 
ple. I had been horribly insulted, almost jilted for her. I had 
been pitied by every woman — I was going to say cat — that I 
knew, and made a laughing-stock! No one could have forgiven 
it. .Now that he was a wretched, ill-humoured invalid I had 
his ear. 1 can’t go into it any more. But partly through real 
circumstances and partly through his own mean suspicions — 
morphia does make you horrid I — he was only too ready to be 
down on his silly schoolgirl of a wife, with her plainly done 
hair and horrid pianoforte solos. Anyhow a case did get itself 
up against her — no, 1 didn't get it up, I only fostered it — through * 
her being silly, indiscreet in some way, all very trifling. I even 
now hardly recollect the ins and outs of it all. And that’s what 
1 had to tell you. 1 fostered the idea, I made it seem very sure, 
and fixed it in his mind. .Nnd — and I’m sorry now that I did.” 
There was a pause. 

“W’hy are 3’ou sorry?" The vicars voice came solemnly out 
of the grey vestry shadows. 

‘A\’hy? Oh, well, because 1 don’t feel angry any more now. 
Especially as he’s dead. He died on the voyage home, five 
.t ears ag(a Besides, he got so horrid with that morphia that 
nobody would have wanted him in the end. Besides, it went 
too far: it did her much more harm than I meant — ever so 
much — thnt s the sting of it. .And I’m horribly unlucky at bridge, 
and one puts it down to that — one must, I suppose ; an evil con 
.science, and all the rest of it. .And your nice church and those- 
calm sort of hymns making one feel early-morningy, and funnv 
m the wrong places, and life altogether being so muddling — 
oh well, there are lots of reasons why I should be utterly miser- 
able. I am utterly miserable— about it. Besides ” she 

paused and ground her two ringed hands together and made a 
diamond and an emerald grate horribly against one another ; 
“besides, 1 saw her in church last night, and I’ve had no sleep.’’ 

‘Aon saw her — here — in church?” 

^ es, in this church. I d lost sight of her for years — ever sine? 
they left India. I didn’t know— not quite reall.v, you know— 
what had happened to her. People said things. But I forgot it 
-tried to. 1 had forgotten it very nearly when I saw her in 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


9 


ifront of me last night Oh, it’s awful ” She suddenly burst 

into a violent passion of tears, rocking herself to and fro wildly, 
hut keeping her seat. Cartyn heard her sobs with the frightened 
Jceiing at his lieart that worries most decent men to whom these 
experiences come. He wanted to get up and say something kind 
and stop it somehow, anyhow. But he remembered his sacred 
oli'ce. and lorebore the heartier action, only saying — 

"There, there, now. Now calm yourself. There — there is n> 
hurry." 

But still the silk-clad lady rocked herself to and fro and 
•teemed unable to speak for wretchedness. He waited a few 
moments and then spoke again. 

"Now tell me, if you wish,” he said, “why it was so awful?” 

'I he sobs waveied a little. "She was so shabb}-,” she said in- 
coherently. "Her clothes — they were .so ugly. She had on com- 
mon gloves, horrid gloves that pretend to be suede and are really 
cotton. Oh, it was that ! — it was t’nose gloves that made me mad, 

"But why?" said the clergyman. He wavered helplessly in 
intuition. His bachelorhood and Oxford and the slums here 
failed him desperately. 

"Why? Can’t you see? That smart, lovely Mary Fre 

oh, I had nearly said her name, and I believe I mustn’t in an 
interview like this? To think that she should have come down 
to that through me.' 

“Through you?" His voice was sharper. 

“Yes, don’t you see? Oh, no, 1 didn't fmi.'-h. 1 told you her 
husband got angry with her and got to hate her and think ill of 
her? Well, when he died suddenly on the homnvard voyage it 
was found that he had left a most irate fui will — he had left her 
with only fifty pounds a year so long as lier clriracter remained 
uncleared of this wr-Uched story. Until tlren her share was to 
remain in abeyance in the hands of trustees; but if. in the opinion 
of these trustees the matter could be put rfght, Iwr income would 
revert back to her. Do you see? It was in famous! 1 told you 
he was rich. But this is what he did to his widow, who has 
practically no living relations to protect h.tr. .And till through 
this ridiculous talk that h.rid less than mething in it !" 

“I suppose there was some foundation for it?" 

“Oh no. It referred vaguely to licr actions in connection with 


10 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


one acquaintance they had, and a rather oddly twisted set of 
circumstances. She had been careless — she was only a girl witli 
no mother, only a widower father when they married, and she 
probably hardly knew the world — the hill-station world," she 
added signihcantly. 

"And for this she is left a practical pauper?" 

“Yes.” 

“Through you?” 

"Well, if you like — yes, through me.” 

There was a long silence. The clock in the outer vestr/ 
ticked uncomfortably, and an ash fell shudderingly in the grate 
The bell in the tower began rumbling and reverberating with its 
strenuous machinery before it got up the energy to strike one 
o'clock; somebody outside the thick stone walls went by on a 
motor loudly blowing an ugly horn. But here all was shadow 
and echo. 

"And you mean to say,” said Cartyn very quietly, and in a 
controlled voice that he purposely kept free from every hint of 
censoriousness, "that you saw your — your victim here, bearing 
the signs of poverty in her dress, and that you were overcome 
with remorse for what you had done?” 

"Yes.” 

"And you want the Church’s forgiveness?” 

"Yes.” 

“Then you must first of all restore what you have taken away. ’ 

"Restore it? How?” 

"That must be discussed. But in so far as you can you must 
make practical reparation to her!” 

The lady, who had been mopping her wet eyes, now shot up 
to her fu . height unexpectedly. 

"Oh no,” she said, very hurriedly; "that is impossible. That 
I cannot do.” 

"You cannot? Why?” 

"I cannot go into that old affair again. The man is dead. 
The thing is over. 1 might give her some money, if that is what 
you mean. I could do that. I am what some people call rich. I 
would settle so much a year on her, so that she need’nt wear 
those horrid gloves, but — oh no — I can’t make that old storv 
public now. It is utterly impossible.” 

"You say she is innocent?” 


A SHEPMERD OF KENSINGTON 


11 


'“Oh, of course. She was never in the wrong. That’s her 
tiresome way.” 

■‘And she — innocent — is to go on suffering frightful disgrace 
r.nd shame and poverty to save your amour propre?” 

“Oh, clergymen put things so wrongly. She has, I tell you, 
got on well enough for hve years. She can go on doing so quite 
well, especially if I make the reparation I suggest. She need 
not know who gives her the money — lawyers, or somebody, could 
settle it on her without her knowing. But beyond that I will 
not go. I cannot say any more. You ask impossibilities. You 
do not know the world.” 

“I am the minister of another, in which you come to me asking 
lor peace,” he said. But it was the first time the fact had really 
struck him xas a practical, working matter, and he said it a little 
lamely. 

“Oh, certainly. But I could get it by lifting her from poverty, 
surely?” 

“You can only get it by confessing your sin and making full 
reparation. Money will not do it. You must restore to her her 
character. That is clear.” 

“Then I refuse!” Her voice was angry and final. 

“We will pray about it.” 

■‘No — not now. I am too upset, I thought you understood life 
better. They always said you were not narrow. That was whv 
I came to you. You may think it easy for me to talk to you like 
this, but 1 assure you it is very unpleasant and tiresome indeed 
1 assure you I have had a miserable morning, quite miserable 
enough to satisfy God, I should think?” 

“God does not want misery,” said Cartyn sternly, -“but re- 
pentance and straight, kind deeds. Th'^n comes happiWess and 
only then. But you are overwrought and tired. Go home and 
rest now, and be glad that you have gone so far in the right way 
as to try and unburden your poor mind of this wretchedness. 
You have that to console you. Later on either you can come 
and talk to me again, or T will come to you — as you like.” 

'riie lady was putting on her boa and fastening her mauve 
gloves. She looked disturbed and dishevelled, but resolute. 

“I will write, Mr. Cartyn,” she said. “My name is Courtmaii 
— Mrs. Courtman, of 16 Darnley Gardens — T will think out a 
plan. But the one you suggest is utterly impossible. T can trust 


12 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


you, 1 suppose, to regard this conversation as sacred — as sacred 
as a confession?” 

“Most certainly,” he answered. “It shall never pass my lips. 
1 am bound by my office to regard it in that way.” 

He said a few words more, trying to advise her, and let the 
unhappy creature go. Then he put on his hat and coat and le*^* 
the church for his large lonely vicarage, his mind full of the 
story of passion and hatred he had given ear to. He had of 
course missed his committee meeting, and had to hurry through 
with his lunch, as a busy afternoon awaited him. But all the 
day his mind travelled back again and again to the confused 
drama into which he had got a glimpse, to the fevered, angrj: 
woman, half-penitent and half-hardened, who refused to do th t 
one thing that would make her emotional sorrow of any avail 
whatever. 

It was an odd story, and had about it almost a note of exag- 
geration, and he wondered a little whether the lady was not 
rather hysterical about it, and inclined to overstate things. Such 
a tendency would fit in well with that Lenten fancy dress. Hf' 
was ever of a hard and fast common sense, and some of the fea- 
tures of this affair puzzled him even to a sense of annoyance 
After all, he said, honour was honour, and if women outraged 
its plain code what was the good of coming to a busy parson and 
then refusing his advice? 

The innermost ethics of feminine troubles had always been 
regarded by him with something of a schoolboy’s contempt, and 
very much the same measure of ignorance. This time they an 
noyed him. 

Then one evening, as he was finishing a rather cheerless bache 
lor supper in his big vicarage dining-room, his man-servant came 
in to announce a visitor, come according to appointment — a cer- 
tain Mrs. Fresne. 

Yes, he recollected, a matter of a reference or something; 
but he got up with sudden alertness from his bleak supper-table 
at the mention of the name. This was only a poor lady, quite 
young, who earned her living in some remote way connected 
with literature, and whom he had only known for two months 
or so, through some parochial affair or other. But her face 
had haunted him oddly, and half out of curiosity to find out why, 
he said he was now glad to see her again. He took the trouble 


r\ SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


13 


to brush himself down in the hall before going into his little 
bare waiting-room to which such parochial applicants were con- 
signed, and made a mental note that he needed some new cuffs 
not quite so much inclined to fringes at the edge. 

Mrs. Fresne rose as he entered the room, and timidly took the 
hand he offered. She was certainly interesting, though her dress 
was plain and shabby, and her manner the last to court attention 
She looked about twenty-eight, but a settled paleness and gravity, 
as of some hidden sadness, gave her at a distance the appearance 
of b-'ing older. Her face was one of strange charm, very wddc 
at the upper part, and tapering to a small chin that, grave as 
she was, had that quaint little cleft in it which is sometimes said 
to denote a nature meant for love. Her eyes were grey and set 
iath('r deeply, and her brown hair was wavy and parted thickly 
under the dull severity of her ugly little hat ; she had a certain 
roundness and fulness of build which suited the character of her 
beauty, and robbed her plain neutral clothes of their chief ugli- 
ness. 

“Pm so sorry,” she said, in a low contralto voice, rather timid- 
ly. “But T could not come any other time, as 1 earn my living 
— I think you know? It is only these papers, Mr. Cartyn — if you 
would sign them for me ; they need a clergyman's reference.” 

He expressed his willingness, and took a quill out of a tin ink- 
stand on his little baize-covered table, and turned up the one gas- 
jet a little higher. He felt eager and pleased to be of use to 
the gentle-voiced, half-apologetic creature. 

“Please read them,” she said, “if you like. But 1 am only try- 
ing for the post of secretary to a ladies’ club ; it is almost settled 
that I shall have it, through the good influence of Lady Jiberene, 
who has very kindly pushed my cause with the committee, ft 
only needs a merely formal reference from you.” 

He glanced over the papers. 

“Shall I say anything — as to knowing you, or anything of that 
sort?” he said. 

“Oh, I hardly think it necessary, thank you. All that is 
w'anted is your reference as to my identity and place of abode, ’ 
she smiled rather sadly, and added, as she passed him some 
further papers, “those prove my identity, and you already know 
my abode. T think it is in your very poorest district?” 

When she smiled the cleft of her chin was more clearly a 


14 


A SllKPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


dimple; she must once have been a merry girl, for even now, 
when she alluded to her poverty, her sad eyes had a sort of 
rparkle that shone bravely even under the bleak light of the 
waiting-room gasjet. 

Cartyn smiled back at her and took the papers, as a mere form. 

“Then you must mean to win my interest by storm,” he said 
jestingly; “for T have a particular affection for that district. 
You’ve got all the unspoilt human nature there, anyhow!” 

He was glancing over the papers as he spoke, or rather pre- 
tending to do so. He handed them back to her almost at once 
He had been chiefly struck by the fact that her Christian name 
was Mary, which seemed strangely to suit her. Also that sh ^ 
was the widow of an Indian judge, a fact that astonished him a 
little in face of her forlorn position of frank poverty, though 
he had always known her to be a lady who had been monetarily 
unfortunate. 

“T see you know Bahore?” he said. 

“Yes. Do you?” she said, rather sharply, as though a little 
startled by his allusion, 

“Oh no. I nly heard of some one from there — rather a tragic 
story — the other day. That was why I was interested.” Mrs 
Fresne had risen and was collecting her papers. 

“It is a place,” she said very quietly, and with a vibrating bit 
terness in her low tones, “of infinite tragedy — for me.” 

He glanced at her as he too rose. 

“I am sorry to hear it,” he said. “Perhaps sometime you will 
confide in me? If I can ever be of use to vou I shall be reallv 
glad.” 

She smiled again, as though sorry for her outburst. “Oh, you 
are kind,” she said. “I am grateful, but I have very few friends, 
and for the present cannot make new ones, for reasons I cannot 
explain now. I keep very quiet, for life has been a hard struggle 
since my husband died on the homeward voyage from there. 

five years ago. But things are getting on better now ” 

Your husband died on the homeward voyage from Bahore — 
fi.ve years ago?” His tone was sudden and eager. 

“Yes, on the Eclat. Why do you ask?” 

Cartyn did not reply. He was gating at her. while a rush of 
puzzling notions filled his mind to the exclusion of her question. 

Mrs. Courtman’s story !— -the Indian civilian who had died on 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


15 


Uie homeward voyage ; the young wife since condemned to dis- 
graceful poverty ; the name his penitent had unwittingly half let 

fall — “Alary Ere the wretched mockery of an annuity of 

lifty pounds, which the persual of this woman's papers had just 
revealed to him. It all agreed in a strange fashion. Bewildered 
and strangely grieved, he did not reply for a moment ; had he 
made a discovery? 

His visitor’s face had gone white under the gasjet, and her 
lips tightened. Possibly she misunderstood his silence. 

“1 will bid you good-night," she said primly, inclining her head 
and hurriedly collecting her papers and gloves and making for 
the door. 

He hurried to open it and held out his hand to her, eagerly 
beginning to explain as well as he could ; but she managed to 
give the impression that her own hands were too busily employed 
to take his, and with a bow and a low word of thanks passed 
swiftly out into the cold spring night, not before, however, Cartyn 
saw that her wide eyes were wet with tears. 

Closing the door he turned back to go to his study, and saw 
that she had dropped her glove on the tiled hall floor in her 
hurry to get away. 

He picked it up and examined it under the heavy ecclesiastical 
lamp that gave dim, uncomfortable light to his cloisterlike resi- 
dence. The glove was a pale brownish thing, cottony to the 
touch, with a sort of dull surface. 

"I wonder if this,” said Cartyn to himself, “is what they call 
imitation suede that is really cotton? Because if so, this thing 
has roused one woman’s selfish heart to confession, and told me 
another’s life-story!” 

He went to his study taking it with him. But he could not 
w'ork. Outside a spring blizzard lashed against his window- 
])anes and drowned the roar of traffic and the distant cries of 
street vendors in a neighbouring mean street where Alary Fresne 
lived. He sat alone staring at the fire, wide-eyed at the odd 
problem that faced him: he had in his hands the secret that 
could restore this most unfortunate woman to her rights; yet 
the seal of confession forbade him to speak of it, even to her. 
It was a sudden and astonishing responsibility thrust into his 
hands, without his dreaming of it, or being in the least prepared 
for it. 


16 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


“Trul}^ extraordinary he remarked in his official sing-song 
voice. Then, suddenly forgetting this and dropping into the tones 
of an average Englishman, he said, “Regularly funny!” He 
swung down with a bang and shut up a handsomely bound copy 
of Instructions on the Doctrinal Illogicality of the Peccable, by 
Father Pick. It was a fine work, leaving ordinary faulty persons 
not a leg to stand upon, not a feather to cover them. It pulled 
their position to pieces, and scattered the bits to the four winds. 
But somehow to-night he could not get into it altogether. Cleve>* 
-^s it was, the illogical peccable were still there hammering at 
his heart. So he turned rather helplessly to a black pipe even 
more reminiscent of Oxford. “Odd things women do. And 
men,” he added, as an afterthought. “Of course, it’s all the 
want of a sound Church life. If we could get sound dogma incul- 
cated everywhere, these passions and things wouldn’t be — there, 
what an odd, delicate face ! And what a history. Pretty, gentle 
creature. And the other woman. What a contrast ! But this 
is sheer waste of an evening I had meant to devote to study ; this 
sort of thing spoils a man’s work. Really, if it were not for 
human nature how well the Church could get on ! That is the 
difficulty I” 

As he said it the sweet eyes of the wronged woman came like 
two stars between him and the printed page. Human nature 
again. Really, how annoying! 


CHAPTER n. 


"Any more business to-day, Miss Grog-an?" said the lady with 
a veil like a blanket flopped over her severe hat, in a voice curt 
with self-assurance. The meeting was being distinctly “rushed. " 

"Xo. Done,” said Miss Grogan, as she turned over some 
books and papers decisively with fingers of a business-like dingi- 
ness. 

“Oh yes, one thing,” she said. “That affair about the new 
club secretary.” She glanced round at the ladies’ committee^ 
twenty or so, sitting in a half-circle and chattering undisguisedly, 
as the morning’s meeting was over, and the tongues w'cre joy- 
ously loosened ; the true business, to them, had now really begun 

“Ladies,” she said, “I need hardly remind you that this appli 
cant for the post of secretary, the wddow of an Indian judge, a 
Mrs. Fresne, has been most ably seconded and recommended by 
Lady Jiberene. Her papers have now come in fully signed and 
in order, wn’th references from Mr. Calvin Hopper (a well- 
known editor), and the Rev. James Cartyn, Vicar of St. Chad’s. 
South Kensington, and others. I think we need hardly go 
further into the matter. I imagine all are agreed in accepting 
L.ady Jiberene’s candidate? 7'hose wdio are in favour — cr — um — 
hands up !” 

Her air of finality was as persuasive’ as her piercingly thin 
voice and pinched nose were intimidatiu.g. Tlie ladies of thj 
Hoyden Club committee were used to tlieir chairman, and. 
knowing her many prickles, forbore to say much aloud, though 
much was privately muttered, and yet more significant things 
v/erc fluttered. It is astonishing what an ryelash or even a 
llowcr toque can do in that way; and there were some flower 
toques present, though the general taste ran rather to a semi- 
u'stlietic utility in the w^ay of costume, as the club’s general aim 
was to be literary. It “ran” in a fashionable .street in the West 
lend, and had a large array of members: origin dly solely literarv 
it now announced itself with delightful ambigiuty as a dub 


18 


A SHEPHERD OF KEXSIXGTOX 


“for women who do things/’ and as most women do things of 
one sort or another — chiefly unnecessary — a large army made easy 
claims to membership, and got in in triumph. 

One lady had entered its portals through having written a 
prize-essay on bee-keeping some fifteen years ago ; and another, 
less literary than altruistic, had distinguished herself by a suc- 
cessful lawsuit with a publisher; some came because they did 
art needlework, and wanted a place to which they could invite 
rather limp men to tea, without impropriety ; and others because 
they wanted to make fun of these as a pastime. But they were 
all very happy, or would have been except for one lady, whose 
reason for getting herself elected was the most gallant of all. 
She had heard that the club had two distinct parties in it (much 
more distinct than those in the House of Commons) and she 
cheerfully contributed her presence and her wealth in order 
that she might set those two parties dancing! In the case of 
this lady her claim to entrance into the club was less because 
she had done things in the past than because she hoped to do 
them in the future; and of her it can truly be said that she 
earned her right to the club’s motto, “Do and dare,” before she 
had been forty-eight hours within its walls. Peace had ceased 
with her admission. 

She now put up a benevolent countenance crowned by vener- 
able grey hair (it was an odd characteristic of this lady that 
she looked benevolent and venerable, and was the utter opposite 
of either) and with her two little oblique slits of eyes beaming 
a deceptive geniality, said, “Is Lady Jiberene our nursing 
mother ?” 

Her thin, insinuating voice penetrated the chatter and turnett 
all eyes to the speaker, who was now thoroughly happy, and 
who beamed out of a fur coat of something stripy and brownish 
grey, uncommonly like a tabby puss in effect. 

Miss Grogan pinched up her tiny face into so many lines that 
she appeared to have crinkled herself suddenly into a Chines'' 
lantern. This was her most ominous smile, and it always meant 
mischief. 

“Dear Lady Jiberene hardly claims that position. Mrs. Gig- 
shaw,” she said with wicked distinctness. “Her years would 
point her to be rather the granddaughter of certain of us, though 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


19 


^icr seniority both of membership and social position give her 
rights no one of taste would dispute,” 

Instead of looking crushed at this ghastly rebuke, Mrs. Gig- 
shaw appeared quite delighted at the turn her own impertinence 
had taken, and glanced gladly round the assembly, with fat 
ringed hands folded, and a strangely rakish Parisian hat all on. 
one side, as if to sa3% “There, I told you I could make them 
dance !” 

Another lady, 30ung and rosy-faced, in a kind of golfing cos- 
tume with a hanging belt, and her hands in her side pockets, 
now spoke up, emboldened by Mrs. Gigshaw’s pucklike move. 

“May I suggest. Miss Grogan,” she said, throwing back a boy- 
ish head in a boyish way, not altogether without attractiveness 
“that the committee have not so far been introduced to the 
applicants for this post? Ought we not to see them? Or have 
30U seen them ?” 

She put her questions like so many balls shot at a ninepin 
and as Miss Grogan, with her Dutch-doll coiffure and hock- 
bottle shaped shoulders, was not unlike a ninepin, one got an 
idea of a naughty boy having a game in school, and expected 
instinctivelN' the wrath to come. 

“Lady Jiberene and myself were satisfied. Miss Hyde,” she said 
stiffly. “And as she is not present it was hardly deemed neces- 

saiw If, however, 3- on insist — and the rest of the committee 

express a similar wish — I can send for Mrs. Fresne, who i"' 
now waiting to hear our decision; also for the other applicant. 
Miss Jacques’ nomination.” 

She uttered the last sentence with so much scorn that even an 
outsider, unused to the Hoyden and its politics, would have 
been struck by the sense of some ulterior sjo:nificance. As a 
matter of fact, Miss Jacques was no other than the head of th*" 
great party which constituted itself a public rival to that of Lady 
Jiberene; and just as Miss Grogan, the chairman, was Lad: 
Jiberene’s voluntary agent and supporter-in-chief, .so Miss Hyd‘- 
was Miss Jacques’. 

P)Ut Mrs. Gigshaw, who was the one unconquerable free lance, 
put in cheerfully, “Let’s toss up for ’em!” 

Nobody heeding this vulgar suggestion, Mrs. Gigshaw con- 
tinued to smile obliquely and concoct fresh “digs” to administer 
to the rival parties, and a messenger was sent to the waiting- 


20 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTOiV 


room for the two lady applicants. Women really only bore pa- 
tiently with Mrs. Grigshaw because she was so ugly, and she 
said she was rich. 

In a few moments the two applicants came in, walking up 
directed to the table at which Miss Grogan sat erect, with cver^; 
eye upon them, poor souls, their faces grave and self-conscious, 
as well they might be under such a hideous ordeal. 

Mrs. Fresne walked in second, being preceded by a dark- 
haired, square-shouldered little lady of far more self-confiden: 
aspect, whose clothes were considerably better and who wore 
gold spectacles which somehow seemed to protect her from 
criticism. Perhaps something in the drooping serious head ol 
tall, quiet Mary, or a slight flush that rose painfully to her soi-- 
cheek, appealed to one of the ladies of the committee of mor'” 
delicate sensibilities (for others) than her sisters, for she cer 
tainly turned hurriedly tiside and said to a neighbour — 

“I cannot look at poor ladies on approval, can you?” 

“No,” said the neighbour, also a little abashed. ‘‘It is not 
good taste for the committee to permit it. But it is not Mis.' 
Grogan’s fault, is it? She was not going to allow it, only Miss 
Hyde interfered.” 

The first speaker, a pretty woman and the mother of a large 
family said impatiently : 

“Miss Hyde is too young, and too hard to understand these 
matters ! I’m blushing for those two poor things — look, it shows ! 
It must. Don’t you feel sorry for them? Oh, isn’t it horrid to 
stare so, when any one of us might have to earn our living in 
just the same way! How rude, how vulgar, how heartless 
women are !” 

“They are horrid,” said the other. “People are horribly vul 
gar when one really sees them in a natural state. A committev^ 
meeting is a very natural state — it is raw human nature un 
disguised.” 

“Oh,” cried the first lady indignantly, “Mrs. Gigshaw is pick- 
ing up her lorgnette I Oh, this is too much.” 

She got up and rustled fussily up to the chairwoman, unable 
to bear it any longer. 

“Dear Miss Grogan,” she said coaxingly in a whisper. “Shall 
we not ask these two applicants to go now? Don’t you think 
Lady Jiberene would really rather?” 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


21 


1 he appeal had its effect. Miss Grogan nodded, and, bowing 
to Mar}' and her companion, dismissed them not imwillingly. Bnr 
the pretty little lady slipped round, and by making some pleasant 
ri.marks managed to get between the two applicants and quite 
naturally to escort them to the door, as though seeing two guests 
out of a drawing-room, chattering as she went. At the door 
she shook hands with both, as though quite in the ordinary run 
of things, and came back to her seat flushed and shy, but tri- 
umphant. A fev/ women weakly tittered. 

“Well?” said Mrs. Gigshaw, addressing creation, “Floyden” 
creation — generally. 

“I vote for the beauty ! She'll make such a bother all round 
See if she doesn’t. The other woman is too dull and sensible to 
i)e interesting, anyway. We don’t come here for repose. Dear 
no !” 

The buzz of comment and conversation was great enough tc 
drown her, however, and very various were the opinions ex- 
pressed by the members. A few, who had lately supported Lady 
Jiberene, were now distinctly piqued because she had not told 
them that her nominee was pretty, a serious omission ; and or 
the matter being put to vote many went over to Miss Jacques’ 
candidate solely on that account. Nevertheless, Lady Jiberene’S 
popularity was so far ahead of Miss Jacques' — she was of no 
family and entertained vastly, and Miss Jacques was of ancient 
lineage and didnff — that when the votes were counted there was 
a distinct majority for Mrs. Fresne, another triumph for the 
Jibereneites. An official letter was sent to South Kensington 
notifying the engagement. 

The next morning the Vicar of St. Chad’s, coming into the 
vicarage rather blue of face from an early service and walk 
tlirough an easterly wind, found amongst his letters one from 
Mrs. Fresne. It was addressed in large, rapid-looking hand- 
writing, and signed with rather a flourish for a letter of meek 
thanks from a penurious widow in distress. He laughed shortly 
to himself as he read it. 

“Well, she’s very grateful for nothing,” he said. “And the way 
she just dashes at that ‘Dear Mr. Cartyn’ gives one quite an idea 
of that Beauty of Bahore business. Oh, no doubt the story 
all true enough. I’m determined to see that other woman agaift 
It’s clearly one’s duty.” 


22 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


He took off the overcoat that he had a fanc}^ to wear ov"' 
his cassock in turning out lor his morning offices. It gave him 
a nice secure priest ly feeling, besides being warm. And when 
rude boys shouted remarks in the streets he strode along the 
more firmly, feeling that he was suffering for the faith by this 
token. 

This Lenten morning, fresh from the stern chaste solitudes oi 
the half-darkened church, he was stung not only by east wind, 
but by a thin little lash of conscience — he called it worry — that 
he had been rather too summary with his penitent of a few days 
ago. His essentially English temperament hated “scenes” and 
emotions, and this fact, combined with the suddenness of the 
lady’s entrance and startling talc, had taken him unawares. Per- 
haps he had not sufficiently considered the affair from her point 
of view, and had prescribed too quickly or too harshly. The 
Church could not always be considering the fads of these crea- 
tures. 

“But Heaven knows Pm not her judge, or any one’s,” he salt' 
to himself with some impatience. “If I gave her the impression 
chat I thought so, or that I was too pressing about her making 
a reparation. I’ll go and try lu put things less severely. Poor 
soul, she seemed miserable enough, and it’s no good expecting 
an ultraheroic action at that stage of her trouble. I’ll write at 
once.” 

He did so, suggesting an interview if she wished, in as friendly 
A tone as he was warranted to take under the circumstance.v 
For all his pre-conceived ideas about bustling women and then- 
nonsense out of the way of serious work, this case remained 
strangely fixed in his imagination, and he could not quite put it 
on one side. Mrs. Courtman replied at once. She would be 
so very glad to see Mr. Cartyn; she named a day in the follow- 
ing week, pleading engagements for the moment. Her letter 
was on large mauve notepaper, written in violet ink, in an im- 
mense splashing hand. She said she was very miserable, undei 
lined, and that Life was so puzzling, with capitals, and he wa.- 
really so good to try to help her out of all her Troubles. She 
signed it with a great flourish, “Yours miserably, Florence Court 
man.” The strong violet scent that emananted from it rather got 
on his nerves; but he retained his somewhat difficult attitude of 
sternly trying to do his part, and fixed the appointment. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


23 


I wo (lays before it was due, he was hurrying along the main 
road on a Saturday afternoon on his way to a small clerical 
conference, an affair got up locally to discuss some question 
referring to the reading of the Bible during Divine service. 
I he chairman was to be an elderly and learned personage, who 
had stooped for the moment from his Oxford lectureship to 
pronounce finally that all public reading of the church lessons, 
that was not entirely incomprehensible to the congregation, was 
pernicious. Cartyn, with a faint secret twinge of some dissen* 
tient feeling, which he called heresy, was going loyally to sup- 
port this school of opinion. He felt it due to his orthodoxy. 

But away along the crowded street, in all the racing muddle 
of traffic, he became aware of a gorgeous mass of spring flowers, 
heaped up, as it appeared, in a great flaming bank of colour. It 
caught his eye at the same moment that the bent head of a stoop 
ing lady, apparently standing in the midst of the flowers, lightly 
caught his interest. It was a glorious spring afternoon, and 
llic dazzling silvery sunshine glittered on the “kinks” in the 
lady’s hair. She did not see him. She was busy buying floweT-s 
from the mountainous vendor in a red check apron, who, with 
her wares, occupied the kerb.- 

He glanced at his watch. The spring airs danced by gaily. 
He thought of the dark, stuffy meeting in support of the obscur 
ing of spiritual truth. He thought of his own rule of avoiding 
women, as beings unwise, useless, and provocative of all trouble. 
He thought of the complicated network of discussion he was 
going to. He felt the passionate candour of the spring. 

Mary Fresne turned and saw him, and blushed to her neck. 

He put his watch in his pocket. 

“So you have started your new duties?” he said, laughing 
suddenly. The laugh was at himself. It was half-ashamed. 
When he laughed he had a curious trick of half-shutting his eyes 
and looking deprecatingly at the speaker. It was quite uncon- 
scious, but it had a boyish, almost mischievous charm. Sh'? 
laughed at it. 

“How do you know?” she asked. 

“Oh, you have a happy air as of one released from Hoydens 
— wasn’t that the name of the club?” 

“Yes, that is it. But I assure you I am more happy because I 


24 


AS HEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


get on witli tlieni so well than because they let a substitute take 
tny place on Saturdays." 

"Are they decent, then?" 

“Oh, really genial. I have hardly been there a fortnight, but 
1 am already feeling the satisfaction of working amongst— weil, 
comparatively cultivated women. I assure you it is the sense of 
that which makes all the difference in life.” 

She spoke with a kind of easy cheerfulness, as though it were 
a perfectly ordinary thing for a lady of education and position 
to be glad to occupy a subordinate post in a collection of all 
sorts and conditions of women. Cartyn had turned with her 
when she paid for her violets and narcissus and walked along 
by her side in the fussing, crowded street, full of eager people 
glad of Saturday afternoon and some sudden spring sunshine, 
and was now lingering with her at the expense of some jostlings 
from the passers-by, and a certain necessity lo shout his re 
marks in her ear in order to be heard above the din of traffic 
He felt quite ridiculously boyish. He said it was the spring, in 
his own mind. 

“You advertise it, anyhow," he said, glancing at the curving 
outline of her cheek, still pinky from the encounter, and noticing 
her brisk, confident walk, as she pushed her way along the 
street carrying her soft heap of fragrant Bowers with a certain 
comely pride. “You look better already." 

“Oh well,” she said, “after hard times one ought to look well 
on prosperity.” 

“Prosperity !” He recollected suddenly the meagre club salary, 
and the tiny annuity' with a sort of pang of indignation. He 
could not have told with whom he was indignant — Florence 
Courtman, partly, but perhaps more with the dead husband who 
had believed evil of this brave being of purity and sunshine, this 
clear-eyed, almost merry creature, as she appeared to-day, buy- 
ing her week-end flowers for a few pence, and going gaily along 
the common High Street and talking about ‘prosperity.” 

“I’ve got half an hour to spare,” he said, looking at his watch ; 
“can’t I come and pay you a call, if you are going home? You 
are never in at proper calling hours, you know, and I’ve never 
done my pastoral duty in that way, have I ?” 

She almost stopped with surprise and faced him, a look of 
undisguised bewilderment in her eyes. 


A SHEPHERD OE KENSINGTON 


25 


"Ar’en’t we close to your home?” he continued, seeing the look. 

‘■Qh, yes, quite near. But — its very stupid and common — 
;ind ” 

"And what? Aren’t you ‘At Home’ to-day?” 

She laughed, but uneasily. 

"No, well. I'm not, am I? I suppose that’s true so long as I 

stay out here. But I was only thinking " A barrel organ 

close to them here struck up a blatantly vulgar tune, almost 
deafening them and making speech impossible, 

Airs. Fresnc shook her head and laughed in whimsical despair. 
They had arrived at the corner of a common turning called 
I. Oder Street, and Cartyn remembered that it was the one she 
lived in. There was a large bird-fancier’s at the corner, and 
endless feathered singers in cages hung all round it outside and 
in, whistling madly to the sunshine and the barrel organ, A 
row of cages full of tame rabbits stood in front of the shop. 
Carlyn’s eye was caught and rested on one, a solitary beast in 
a cage by himself, a large ginger-colonred rabbit. He had clear, 
stern eyes, and upright cars, and his rich golden coat shaded 
off to his white paws and a little white tail, all pf which Cartyn 
observed as the creature sat chewing something out of his paws 
and rather scornfully studying him. It was a silly thing to 
notice, but the spring and that forgotten schoolboy sense of 
Immoror.s adventure had got into his blood, and this warm 
coloured creature took his fancy as something out of a fairy- 
book — the large rabbit guarding the portals of the fairy princess, 
or something fantastic in that way. As they paused to let the 
crowd go by this fluffy animal appeared to gaze back at him 
with a kind of mysterious intelligence that was rather weird 
and wholly laughable, so that he laughed outright^, and he and 
Mary were still in a somewhat inconsequent and merry moo:! 
when they arrived at the house she called her lodgings. 

Here were no further guardian rabbits, and she entered with 
a latchkey, and led the way upstairs to her own part of the 
house, which consisted of two rooms on the second floor. Noth- 
ing escaped Cartyn’s eye, yet nothing disgusted him. He was 
in the absurd mood to suppose that he was playing a game, and 
linding a new country; and everything helped the impression — 
even the novelty of stairmats made of clothtags, such as one sees 
in cettag'^s, and a pot of musk in the staircase window, and th-' 


26 


A SHEPHERD OI- KENSINGTON 


dreary brown “marbled” walls of that staircase, and the exhilarat- 
ing view of grey roofs and red chimneys and other people s 
backyards with clothes hanging out to dry. 

Mary had hurried up and had opened her sitting-room door 
to welcome her visitor, and as he entered he came to the conclu 
sion that Mrs. Fresne must be a much younger woman than ho 
had originally thought; she had, indeed, such a bright colour, 
and her eyes sparkled so. 

He took the chair she offered and set to work at once, after 
a glance round at the room, to study the photographs with 'which 
it was mainly furnished. In this he showed tact. For of the 
poor common furniture what was not imitation mahogany was 
bamboo ; and the scanty little crimson curtains in the two win- 
dows, and the tiny grate told a tale whose pathos would not bear 
comment or even, to him, thought at all. Their contrast to the 
woman was too vast to be even humorous. But the photographs 
were charming; many of them were of Indian friends and Indian 
days, and most of them were signed and beautifully framed. 
They covered the ugly walls whose common wallpaper was spotted 
like a fever, and scattered themselves all over the odd shelves 
and recesses in fine profusion. There were also some of the 
usual bazaar trophies, native curiosities and odd ornaments and 
weapons and little idols, and here and there some quaint ivories 
and things of distinct value, looking odd in the midst of the vul- 
gar decorations of the place itself. 

“If I offer you tea, Mr. Cartyn,” said Mary a little shyly, “I 
must make it myself. I always do, you know. Shall I?” 

“I shall be most grateful,” he said, and picked up her photo- 
graph to hide a self-consciousness of his own at the thought 
that perhaps he was prying too cruelly into her little sad home 
secrets. However, it was too late to go back now; he had acted 
upon impulse in coming here, and now he must stay it out. And 
she seemed quite at ease. She placed a kettle on the little fire 
and went into the next room and removed her hat. Then he 
heard her busy with cups and saucers at an outer cupboard, and 
she came in and laid a little embroidered teacloth, very much 
faded by constant washings, quite naturally, talking to him as 
she did so about the photographs which he was examining, as 
any hostess not compelled to get the tea herself might do. 

“Here you are on a hill-pony,” he said, “in a big rush-hat— 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


27 


strong sunshine and shadow. By Jove ! That must have been a 
glorious day. And here you are in a palanquin ; and here you 
arc rowing; and here’s a group — that’s you under the tree, 
though there’s something dififerent about you, isn't there?” 

‘‘Yes. added years,” said Mary demurely, busy over the tea- 
caddy, only she was laughing to herself, not apparently at all 
dejrressed. 

■'No, it isn’t that,” said Cartyn, still examining it. ‘T tell you 
what,” he suddenly glanced up at her, “it’s your hair. Don’t 
you do it differently now?” 

He studied her head bent over the caddy, and then remembered 
that he had never yet seen her without her hat. It was a charm 
ing head, tine of proportion and covered with crisp, warm brown 
hair which in the picture was pulled straight back from the 
))row, and in real life was parted in the middle and brought up 
to a high knot in steady ripples. It was a very pretty head, held 
delicately, like a flower on a tall stalk. 

“Well, of course,” said Mary, “I’m years older, for one thing 
I'hat portrait represents a ridiculously happy schoolgirl. Those 
were just merry days! — that was before my marriage.” 

She had not meant to allude to her own affairs, but the words 
slipped out before she was aware, and in spite of herself she 
could not help her voice sinking lower over the last two words, 
in a sort of pained hush. It was instinctive, and she was hardlv 
conscious of it herself. 

Cartyn heard the tone. He kept the thing in his hand, saying 
as naturally as he could, after a decent pause — 

“You were very young when you married, then?” 

‘YTs.” She had not a word of self-pity to offer him, though 
here was a fine opportunity for a woman of melodrama. He tried 
her again out of curiosity. 

“And have you left — I suppose you have — many friends in 
India ?” 

She smiled sadly to herself as she went about her tea-duties, 
and shook her head. 

“Why. whose friends are left anywhere,” she said, “in these 
days? Friends fly about all over the place; and no one thinks 
of staying in India for years together as they used to do in the 
days of interminable travelling.” 

He could not test her further, because Ir's heart '.vc'; full 


28 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTOX 


admiration of her reticence, in that here was a chance and <i 
mood for self-pity on a grand scale, and she would not take an 
inch of it. She had no means of knowing that he was aware 
of her story, and she did not now play upon his recently offered 
friendship by a dramatic recital of it. Over her teacups, at her 
homely occupation, she seemed a being most dignified and fair 
with this refinement added to her graces. A being, even, of an 
other age; the stately Beatrice of Dante carrying “love within 
her eyes” ; or the woman of the old proverbs “opening ber mouth 
with wisdom.” He was afraid his own e3^es showed more than 
they ought, and cast about for an occupation. 

“You’re busy,” he said, jumping up. “I must do something 
too. Where are your flowers? Shall I arrange them while yo;-* 
cut that bread and butter? I’ve never done it that I know of, 
but I must be industrious too.” 

She got the bouquet, and gave him some little vases an 1 
Benares bowls, and proceeded to laugh helplessly as she watched 
his wild blunders over these floral decorations. There wen- 
three bunches of violets, and two of yellow and white jonquils, 
the heavily scented species. With great and laborious care he 
cut the tow binding the violets, and after spreading them out 
picked them up one by one and placed them in the tallest vase 
with the result that their tiny heads were almost instantly im 
mersed and lost in the water, like drowned insects. 

“Somehow I can’t make them show,” he said, staring at her. 
“What is it? Let’s try these.” 

So he unfastened the jonquils with equal care and proceeded 
to stick their long lanky stalks in the squat Benares bowls. 

“This ought to show,” he said triumphantly. 

“It does,” said Mary. “It looks like a rheumatic spider ! Oh. 
look ! they’re all coming out again !’’ 

P'or, with a movement of the table shaking the water, all tlu- 
long-legged jonquils gave a heave and flopped out of their shallow 
bowl on to the tablecloth again. 

He gave up in despair. 

“Look here. I’ll cut the bread and butter,’’ he said, with in- 
spiration, “if you’ll do this floral business.” 

She looked dubious. 

“But really,” he argued, “I have done bread and butter before. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON. 


29 


\oii don’t go to Sunday-school treats without learning something. 
Do let me iinish, and you hnish this?” 

So they changed tasks, and in a few minutes the bread and 
butter was cut, and the flowers lightly and gracefully arranged, 
and they sat down to as pleasant a little tea as any two persons 
ever enjoyed. 

Cartyn had always hated that part of his duty which forced him 
into tea sanctuaries, but for once he did not chafe at its necessity, 
as he had done at many a more elaborate and dainty set-out. 

'I hey talked about India, quite superliciaily, and about Lenten 
services, and about work — anything that came along. She told 
him all about the Hoydens, and described Mrs. Gigshaw and 
detailed the covert reasons for the rival parties in that assembly 
She made him laugh once or twice by the whimsical sketches 
she drew of her employers and their friends, and he rose to leav." 
with the sense that there was still a great deal to say if he could 
only have stayed longer. As he bade her good bye he said — 

“Aren’t you rather lonely here? Wouldn’t you like me to 
send some really nice woman to call? You ought to have friends 
h-^re, as well as in India.” 

Her merry face fell to that old look of sadness. 

“You are very kind, but I cannot receive any one, however 
nicc,” she said, averting her eyes. ‘T cannot say anything more 
definite, but it is not only poverty that keeps me here, living in 
this obscure fashion. There is — another reason. I would ask 
you,” she paused and struggled with herself, “to believe nothing 
of wrong in that reason. I assure you there is nothing — in the 
past — of which I need before Heaven feel ashamed. That is all 
I can say. Please do not ask any further. You are a man, and 
a clergyman, and less likely to measure these things by their 
outward appearances. But these ladies — these nice, kind, really 
benevolent ladies — have another foot-rule by which they test 
such mysteries. I fear I should come out badly from such an 
ordeal — I fear I might get more foot than rule in the end !” She 
laughed rather sadly. 

“But the Hoydens ” began Cartyn. 

“Oh, the Hoydens are different. I am their servant, after all, 
though treated fairly enough. There is no question of whether 
1 should be fit, being a mystery, to associate with their young 
daughters, or to teach the poor!” 


A SHEPHERD OF KEKSIXGTOX 


3U 


“Xovv you are bitter!” he said. “And you mean Mrs. Holden.” 
He alluded to a lady who was a light in the parish, and who 
had not greatly welcomed this new addition to it. She shook 
her head but smiled guiltily all the same. 

“You do,” he continued. “But I had no thought of sending 
her. Pier goodness is tjie direct kind that goes in a strict groove. 
Poor, dear woman, she cannot get to heaven except on railway 
lines — but why be angry with her?” 

“Pm not. Only I don’t want to get under the wheels,” said 
she. 

“No, no, naturally. However, we will talk about this later 
Meanwhile, count me as a friend, at any rate.” 

She could not speak to thank him. She smiled and tossed up 
her chin a little with raised eyebrows, a whimsical trick of hers 
He went away puzzled and a trifle irritated with somebody or 
something. He felt angry with the poor street, in which the 
sharp glittering spring sunshine was beginning to fade, with a 
stern sense of anger in his heart. He passed out into the broader 
thoroughfares and away to the regions of large, looming, gre;*- 
houses and grim squares where his church was situated, feeling 
almost strange in returning to a world where he was a solemn 
and responsible being, and not a boy cutting bread and butter 
in a flower-scented parlour. 


CHAPTER 111 


“\es, brother, wc have been more blessed than we could have 
hoped in our Lenten mission. A brother lent us a magic-lantern 
and the outside of the church wall was illuminated by a large 
invitation made of coloured oil lamps, so that even the people 
on Vanguards could see and understand.” ' 

“Ah,” said the vicar. He was in a hurry, making his way lO 
Darnley Gardens. His clerical friend went on — 

“1 he fervour was immense. Miss Zoe Yearsley and Miss Ur- 
sula Limpole, two of our most faithful sisters, attended every 
single service, and there were in all forty-nine of these. It is 
wonderful !” 

“Did you get any men, though ?” said the vicar. 

“Men? Yes, indeed. A notoriously evil-living election agent — 
and a converted barrister. And we managed to circumvent the 
bishop over the matter of incense. And everyone of those little 
violet books have gone.” 

“Gone.” 

“Oh, I mean people have bought them. And you will be gla<l 
to hear that we are to have a Quiet Day in the Rural Deanery. 

1 have urged it for months. I have worked and toiled for that 
until I am almost spent. Every day I have hammered and fought 
for it.” 

“All those fussing days for one quiet one, eh ?” 

“Yes, yes, but think how necessary. I am urging the Rural 
Dean to get Fraser to hold it.” 

“Fraser? — the man who puts O. S. B. after his name?” 

“Yes. You seem dubious?” 

“1 am only dubious as to the quietness of the day!” said Car- 
tyn. “Fraser is not admitted by many of the men in the Deanery 
at all. They will have something to say, it strikes me !” 

“Ah, even so. But so long as he rouses the dormant, surely 
all will be well?” 

“Yes, but I don’t call that quiet.” 


A SHEPHERD OF KEXSIXGTOX 


riie vicar was hurrying to Mrs. Conrtman's at the moment. 
On his way there he had found himself overtaken by this friend, 
one Brother Anselm, a man who had the volcanic repntation o', 
being at once a socialist reformer and a ritualist of the severest 
school. That is to say, his propaganda’ was the overturning o^ 
all order in worldy things, and the supreme worship of authority 
(his own) in matters spiritual. He would have you rob a capi 
talist, but die to obey the merest hint, covered in dog-Latin, of 
a dead and foreign bishop, as interpreted by himself. He was 
in the sincerest earnest, and he had blue hnger-nails and no 
sense of humour. He liked Mr. Cartyn. He saw in him a latent 
love of formalism, possibly capable of eventually turning him into 
the ecclesiastical gramophone he himself had become. 

But the vicar seemed prc-occupied. ‘‘You are in a hurry?” the 
brother asked. 

“Oh, I’m going to see some one who wants my advice. Rather 
a queer case. A sort of affair of a confession." 

“Confession? I didn’t know you allowed that. Was it in a 
box or merely in the vestry?” 

Cartyn stared at the odd question. “Why, in the vestry,” he 
said. “We have no boxes.” 

“1 hen it need hardly be discussed. It was only a conversation, 
apparently.” 

“Oh no, it was more than a conversation — far more,” said 
Cartyn, puzzled to express his meaning. 

“My brother, it could not have been. If the penitent sat on a 
chair and merely talked it over it does not come under the head- 
i’lg of genuine confession.” 

“But — does the chair make the difference?” gasped Cartyn. 

“Oh no, the spirit.” 

“Then the spirit was most emphatically confession.” 

“Even so, my brother. Yet if all things were not in order tlYs 
could not be so.” 

“Then,” said Cartyn, “you give me to understand that because 
she sat at a vestry table she need not make reparation for her 
sin?” 

“You are perverse, brother,” said the recluse, with a great and 
milky mildness, capable of extreme irritation upon certain occa 
sions, and this was undoubtedly one. “If the erring woman onlv 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


33 


came and talked she could only receive conversational advic * 
in reply.” 

“And her repentance need only be conversational — chatty?" 
said Cartyn, sardonic in his disappointment. 

'[ he brother waved a bluish hand in deprecation. 

"You fail to see my point, my brother. Make the poor soul 
e:.bey the Churcli and leave the rest” 

“But how could I?” he said. “A society woman — idle, selfish 
emotional, unrestrained, capricious. I’ve always worked amongst 
men. These wild creatures arc not to be understood by th • 
ordinary masculine mind. Women in the slums are simpler be 
in.gs altogether, with natures on a larger, plainer, more definite 
scale altogether. One can do something with them — but these 
frivolous, talkative, fly-away women are not to be dealt with at 
all. I defy any ordinary man to make anything of them beyond 
bringing them to church occasionally, and doing what little good 
he can. They think a gift of money covers everything — every 
responsibility, every insincerity, every lie, every wretched worldly 
crime of which they are capable! They have no hearts.” 

“No, friend, but obedience, strict, implicit obedience to every 
little rule and form of Mother Church, is a churchman’s first 
duty. He must submit, even to the bowing of the neck.” 

As he spoke they passed a short spare little man of the artizan 
cl'iss. who nodded, possibly good-humouredly, but certainly rude 
ly, to Brother Anselm, without removing his hat. He has a 
wispy beard and a fiery, panther’s eyes. 

“There goes a grand fellow,” said Brother Anselm ; “one of 
our coming labour leaders. That man has w<irked himself to a 
skeleton to overthrow the tyrannies that oppress the world. H i 
will succeed, if determination counts at all.” 

“What tyrannies?” asked the vicar. 

“All the tyrannies. The laws of Engla.nd. the laws of capital, 
the heel of the social oppressor. He vvill strive to overturn th'' 
power of class, even if it mean revolution, civil war. He will 
stop at nothing, nothing!” 

He waved his hand and his wide serge sleeve wi<h wild en- 
thusiasm. He could not see his own self-contradiction. Hi' 
face was actually flushed with his zeal to push forward the cause 
of a social anarchy and a moral autocracy at the same momen:. 
He did not realize that in doing so he epitomised th- longings of 


34 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


many modern reformers. The dream is an old one, ever new. 
■‘Thou shalt disobey the laws. Thou shall obey me. ’ 

Cartyn, who respected his character, which was blameless, and 
who only threw doubts on his intelligence, held out a friendly 
hand as they came in sight of Darnley Gardens. 

“Fm due here. 1 must say good-bye,” he said. 

"Good-bye. And, if I may offer my advice, I say urge th-‘ 
penitent to submit to the Church and all will be well.” 

"But if she won’t, what then?” 

“Put her, then, out of your mind. The world will claim its 
own. Shake the dust off your feet.” 

The vicar went up to No. 16 steps really almost wishing he 
could. He disliked his errand for all it was of his own appoint- 
ing. 

The hour Mrs. Courtman had chosen was late afternoon, and 
he was shown into the foolishly furnished house, positively untidy 
with unnecessary luxury, feeling self-conscious and most unlike 
an accusing pastor. He reflected as he followed the footman up 
the stair that it is much easier to accuse comfortably when the 
windows are church-window shaped, and there are no gardenias 
in bowls, and dead pink satin tapestry walls, and when there 
isn’t a tea-kettle singing cheerily on a ridiculous little silver 
stove, and a smell of toast and muffins. These things are too 
full of home suggestion for the ascetic mood. 

Mrs. Courtman, handsome, eager, heavily ornamented and very 
trailing as to costume, received him w'ith a cordiality perfectly 
respectful and unmistakably genuine. 

. She offered him tea and would not have the lights put on, 
the rosy firelight illuminated the great room, and made its 
dainty treasures seem to dance and kindle in fairy fashion all 
round the little island of comfort, made by the tea paraphernalia 
in the midst of its vastness. 

Cartyn kept his inner mind strictly on his errand, and though 
he had to talk conventionally about his church, his parish, his 
work, his ideas, for the first half-hour, he was determined that 
he would not go away before something had been said to bring 
her to their original business. Even he could see that she talked 
too fast to be happy. 

“I suppose you lead a busy life?” he said, to check her chatter, 
after a time. “You go out a great deal?” 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTOX 


35 


‘‘Oh dear, yes — frightfully,” she said. “My life is one whirl, I 
do assure you. You know what society is, and what it demands ' 

1 tell you I never have a minute to call my own — my real own.” 

“ 1 hen ma\' I commend you for finding time for church this 
lent?” he said. 

“Oh well, TiS to that. Eve tried such lots of things,” she saia. 
“One is uncomfortable and unhappy in the corners, you know— - 
it is so horrid to be tremendously successful but unhappy in th ■ 
corners — have you ever felt it? Oh no, but you wouldn’t; yon 
are a clergyman, and they’re different. As I told you if I conUl 
only be really good, I fancy I might be happier. Only 1 can’i 
alter my hats to boat-shaped ones, or grow ugly — is that really 
necessary? I went to the Christian Science people one year, only 
they seemed to think that because I hadn’t got cancer I wasn'c 
worth bothering about. And th^y told me that all me — the real 
uic, the temper one, with the frivolities and the loves and mud- 
dles and hates — didn’t really exist, you know, but was a delusion; 
and that the only real part of me was a dull, flat soul, that I’m 
sure / haven’t been introduced to. It must be in the attic. So 
1 left them — it was really strong of me to do so, for an ultra - 
.smart set attended on fine Sundays — and went — you mustn’t be 
shocked — to the spiritualists. They said nothing about sins at 
all. They simply wrote things on slates, such dull things, not 
always quite proper, and the ghosts had such ribald names. 
1 can't imagine a respectable dead person c^'lled Jimkins or 
Ifloggins, can you? Yet that was what the visions called them- 
selves. They didn’t, seem to me to be quite nice. Rather com- 
mon, they were. So I tried lAirm Street when you can’t get in 
because it’s so crowded, and that did for a time because I neve; 
got in, yet I had the real satisfaction of driving there and coming 
away again, and who could do more? However. I found that 
empty, especially in bad weather, so I gave up all religion of a 
serious kind, and took to philosophy and bridge and Savoy sup 
pers. But one tires of them all. So I came to your church, and 
I really liked it. because the music is so sweet, and when you 
pre'’ched you were not narrow, and talked about real life and said 
kind things. Really it was you that I came for. You looked a^: 
if you wouldn’t be always shocked.” 

He listened patiently. Her flighty words needed the accom- 
paniment of her really troubled eyes and spoilt anxious face. 


36 


A SlIPHERD OF KENSINGTON' 


old before its time, to rob them of hopeless llippancy. He had 
at least the sense to see that her mode of expression and his 
might be widely different, and yet that the essence of her longing 
might be the same. 

‘T’m glad you think I said kind things," he said slowly. “Be- 
cause I’ve been thinking that perhaps 1 may have seemed harsti 
when you spoke to me the other day. If I did so, I hope you’ll 
forgive me? I had no such intention. Was it so?” 

"Harsh? Oh no; only you asked for so much,” she said. “I’m 
glad you have spoken of it now. I’ve thought over what you 
said, but I can’t do that. Think what it would mean. How do 
you reinstate a character? I suppose in this case it would be 
to the trustees and the lawyers and so on. I know the trustees — 
there is Colonal Graydon and one other ; they are old friends, 
in with all my set out there, and connected with everybody I am 
intimate with over here. How can I go and say to them, “Look 
here. I’ve done a frightful thing — half-invented and deliberately 
fostered a fearful scandal against an innocent woman, causing 
her to be harshly judged by her husband, and left a widow, pen- 
niless and in disgrace!’ No, I couldn’t. Can’t you see that they 
would all cut me, cast me off, send me to Coventry if it came out 
as it would have to come out to restore her her fortune. Besides.” 
she added, in a more assured voice, "probably I could not find 
her if I tried. I’ve been to that church four times since and 
looked all over for her, but she was not there. I’m beginning 
to fancy that she was only a passing visitor — this is a crowded 
part of London, and people easily appear and disappear again. 
Oh, you must see that I couldn’t go through such a public scene 
as that ! Why, it would be ruin to me !’’ 

"She is ruined,’’ he said quietly. 

“Oh dear, yes, but she must be used to it now." 

“I don’t think she is — can be. Besides, that would not release 
you from your own responsibility. The action remains unwiped 
out, whatever she does. You must see that.” 

“But think of the horrible scenes I should have to go through ' 
Oh no, it is not human to expect me to do that. I should never 
hold up my head again.’’ 

"Sin always brings stern consequences,’’ said Cartyn. "Of 
course, I see your point of view — it would be a terrible ordeal 
for you. Yet it is your plain duty. And until you do restore 


A SHEPHERD OE KENSINGTON 


37 


her to her rights, believe me you will never have any real peace 
of mind," h.e paused a moment — “you are too good a woman to 
be happy with such a lie in your soul," he said solemnly. 

“G'lod? I — a good woman?" 

es, or you would not have confessed. You would not have 
1) en touched by — this.” 

He took the drab cotton glove out of his pocket suddenly, and 
held it out in the firelight. 

“What," she cried, “what is that? What — why, it’s an ohl 
glove just such as I described to you! It is hers, I believe, 
flow have you got hold of it?” She suddenly flashed on an 
electric light that stood by his elbow and looked in his face, per 
haps thinking to find guilt there. But he was looking back at 
licr calmly and steadily. 

“It is only a guess," he said. “A lady came to me the other 
night and asked me to sign some papers, a matter of a reference 
to enable her to earn her living. I had to read over some of her 
private papers, and in doing so I found her to be the widow of 
an Indian judge at Bahore named Fresne, who had died on board 
tlic homeward bound liner Eclot five years ago. She has an an- 
nuity of fifty pounds a year, and has for some secret reason tc 
live in seclusion and away from friends. She dropped this glove 
in leaving my house. I could not help connecting her story and 
yours, though she herself told me nothing. You need not say 
\cs or no to this guess of mine. I have no right to ask and you 
no obligation to reply." 

Airs. Courtman had taken the glove in her hand and was look 
ing at it steadily, her face suffused by a flush of shame, but her 
mouth sulky and angry and her brow knitted. 

“Then," she said, after ‘a pause, “I suppose she is living here, 
ill this neighbourhood?” 

“Hardly this neighbourhood," said Cartyn, “though in this 
parish. She has lodgings in a slum, not so very far from here." 

“In a slum — oh no!" 

“But yes, most certainly. She has to be near her work, and 
there are no rooms to be got for the prices she can give excep| 
in a poor back street that you, at any rate, would call a slurn. 
Perhaps I don’t, as I have worked in the East End. But they 
are dreary houses let out in one and two rooms at a time, and 
there are" — he paused for a dramatic illustration such as be 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 




thought she would understand — “there are dirty children on the 
doorstep and cornets on the kerb.” 

“Oh, it’s too awful,!” said IMrs. Courtinan. She got up ciiid 
threw the glove across to the table at Ins side, and paced rapidly 
about the room in angry excitement, uttering occasional ejacu- 
lations. “JIow long have you known her? she contmued. 

“About two months.” he replied. “But only very slightly. She 
did something for a wretched girl in my district, and 1 got to 
know her through one of our deaconesses. I never reall}' spoke 
to her about her own affairs till the other night, though I could 
see from the first that she was a lady of birth and education, 
and I confess I was rather curious, and a little horrified at her 
wretched mode of living. [ here seemed to be something radical- 
ly wrong. 1 spoke to a lady who works in the parish about 
her, but she said, “Oh, there is .some black story against her, 
you may be sure. No nice woman with prop-^r friends would 
be living in such a street in such poverty and with her looks, 
tool’ That lady, whom I have hitherto regarded as motherly — 
she is, in fact, a very good mother and happy and rich — warned 
me solemnly against permitting this mysterious Mrs. Fresne to 
do good to my poorer people, or be seen about our parochial 
affairs. She was so sure there was a ‘black story’ against her.” 

He rose and walked to the fireplace and stood there, suddenly 
thrusting his hands deep into his pockets and looking down at 
the floor; then he said slowly and deliberately, “T now know that 
she was right. There is.” 

“Yes, there is,” said Mrs. Courtman in passionate reply; “but 
I dare you to tell a soul about my share in it ! Miserable as I 
am,” she cried out wildly, her voice rising to an hysterical note, 
“I will not do what you say! I cannot. I dare nol. If that is 
all the comfort your Church and you can give me, then all 1 
can say is you are as useless as the Christian scientists and the 
spiritualists. I thought that by confessing my fault T could get 
peace of mind, but here you have landed me in far more troubl ^ 
and despair than I ever felt before. It’s making m^ quite ill. 
If I cannot get ‘the Church’s forgiveness' by saying Fm sorrv, 
then I’ll do without it altogether !” 

Cartyn remained standing with his hands in his pockets, his 
eyes averted. He let her rave on, and then said quietly, “There 
is positively no question of my speaking to a soul about it with- 


y\ SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


39 


out your leave. I cannot do so — my hands are tied — even if 1 
wanted to. 1 hat would be a betrayal of a confidence made in 
con!css:on. Of course, you can trust me. P>ut you came to 
me 'o pomf the way of happiness for you, and I have pointed it, 
so far as I am able. 1 will go now. But let us both pray for 
a way out of this sad tangle.” 

She took his hand with something of the air of a cross child 
that has. only half got over its sulks, and her eyes were wet and 
mis'Table. 

“Then good-bye. I will write,” she was saying. Just then the 
door opened, and a visitor was announced. Cartyn saw a 
rather absurdly “overgroomed” man come walking mincingly 
into the long drawing-room, a man no longer young, with a 
loolish but handsome face, with heavN' c\*f'lids and a much 
twisted moustache. He made his exit at once, but he had the 
misfortune of possessing very sharp ears, and he heard as he 
shut the door behind him, “Oh, Colonel Graydon ” 

“My dear Florence — a parson?” And Mrs. Courtman’s fret- 
ful reply — 

“Yes, yes. You know it’s the thing to be serious this Lent. 
But I don’t think I shall last out till Easter — it’s ajready spoil- 
ing my temper, and I’m sick of it !” 

He did feel, then, very like shaking the dust of Darnley Gar- 
dens off his feet. Apostolic efforts, he had always believed, 
were at least met by picturesque resistance. 

Impatiently he now said to himself he saw no comparison be- 
tween an early Christian martyr meeting large yellow lions in a 
Roman arena, and a modern product of Oxford facing this 
shifting woman in her own drawing-room! The lions — they 
always had been very large and yellow in the mission-room 
oleographs — made you look tremendously dramatic : which would 
have been a consolation. Mrs. Courtman didn’t. Though quite 
stupid herself, she made you feel small. After all, why shouldn’t 
he do as Brother Anselm did, and be content to spend his ener- 
gies on Miss Ursula Limpoles and little violet books? It was 
much less humiliating and, in ordinary people’s eyes, it was 
much more religious. What was wrong with him? 

Walking along quickly in angry meditation, he came in sight 
of his church : its tall, tapering form outlined sharply against 
the declining primrose colour of the evening sky, the lightly 


40 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTOX 


built, delica.c pinnacles like lacc against their pure transparent 
br.ckground. Above the smoke and the shadow of lesser build- 
ings it stood, tall and beautiful, dwarfing by comparison the 
great gloomy streets that stretched for miles around it, and so 
high as to be indift'erent to the heavy pall of vapour that even 
in the clear evening settled above their chimneys. 

Somehow the very building seemed to possess a djgnity, a 
sense of peace that was far iTom him or his. What tradition 
was it that could be eloquently expressed by an exquisite build- 
ing, and yet not found in the soul of the man who ministered 
<11 it? That thing against the sky was stone and bricks and 
mortar. He was an immortal soul, a pastor of men. Yet it 
liad what he had not. 

Tie felt disturbed, chaotic, angry — more angry than the spring’s 
wicked south-east wind, cutting up the Imads of the newly born 
lilac buds in the squares, could quite account for. 

Something in his training, something in his experience, had 
played him false, he said. 

He spent an hour over some charity business that required an 
expendence of practical common sense. That was to cheer him- 
self up. He said he still had that. 

Then he went home to his ugly vicarage. In the rather drearily- 
lighted hall there was a large parcel awaiting him. He slit 
open and read all his letters first, then turned to this and 
opened its many careful wrappings. It contained an exquisitely- 
carved oak triptych, the three sacred figures most beautifully- 
wrought of ivory-, wood, and metal, the faces and garments 
coloured in perfect imitation of life. It was possibly Italian, 
and was certainly almost flamboyant in its fanciful beauty; and 
it must have cost a heavy sum of money, so perfect of its kind 
was every tiny portion of the material and workmanship. With 
it was a note on mauve paper : 

“Dear Mr. Cartyn, — Won’t you accept the enclosed from 
one in penitence and misery? I am convinced that I shall never 
know luck or happiness again till I gain forgiveness. Oh. do 
not be too hard on one so unhappy and despairing. Let me 
see you again some time soon, and let me be forgiven. — Yours 
in sadness, “Florence Courtman.” 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


41 


He turned from the superstitious offering in momentary dis- 
gust. 

“Am I the judge?” he said angrily. 

Then he told his man to put the thing in the study. Aft^^r 
supper he had some letters to write and the preparations for a 
sermon to glance over, tasks that meant two hours’ close work at 
least. T he triptych stood before his eyes whenever he glanced 
up— his man had placed it with pride on a side-table in full view 
of his writing-table. Again and again he glanced at the exqui- 
site picture, the iv^ory figure of the Christ and Mary and John — 
the vision of infinite suffering so tenderly prolonged — almost 
against his will. 

"A woman can buy that.” he said, “look upon it, and ih a 
sense appreciate it, and yet exist for five whole years with the 
secret of another’s ruin upon her soul ! What is there wrong 
with our religion? What is the root of the sentimentality and 
superstitition that makes such a thing possible? Eternal wis- 
dom.” he put his hand over shut eyes for a moment, “make me 
see.” 

i4e could not know liow his prayer was to be answered. 


CHAPTER IV 


“Deaj</ Dear! Dear! But this is too dreadful! Unbearable! 
Whew ! The heat !” 

Lady Jiberene, short and stout and ruddy, went fussing round 
and round the club drawing-room like a tin duck set going U 
clockwork. She had thi)^ appearance of having been wound up 
and set going without her own volition, as little women who 
take short steps *so often have when excited. Round and round 
she span, waving her short arms. 

“You ought to attend to the temperature, Mrs. Fresne ! I Itu 
heat of these rooms is appalling. The register is 80°, I declare ! 
Most unwholesome. Please let my orders be attended to. 
Where is the footman? 

She whirled round as she spoke, and as though the clockwork 
had taken a freakish turn in slowing down, suddenly trundled 
out of a side door and disappeared in search of fresh (or 
fresher) worlds to conquer. 

There were three doors to the club drawing-room, which 
formed a sort of centre to the building. The opposite one now 
hung open. “Good heavens! Mrs. Fresne, what are you do- 
ing? Opening the windows?” rang out a deep and resonant 
voice in huge displeasure. 

“Only for a second. Miss Jacques. Do you really mind? 1 
was told it was too hot a moment ago.” 

“Too hot? It is never too hot. I’m sure I can never get 
warm in this ice-house !” said the gaunt intruder. “However, 
if you must let in the air for a moment. I’ll go into the reading- 
room and wait. But please send for me when it has got nice 
and warm again.” 

“Thank you,” said Mary, busy with the window, while an 
open-mouthed footboy, called the footman, tugged at another. 

“Oh, for the good of the club ” began Miss Jacques mag- 

nanimously. 

“It was only Lady Jiberene,” began Mary. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


43 


“J’‘b — Lady Jibercne?” cried Miss Jacques, returning precipi- 
tately into the room. “Then put down that window, if you 
l)lcasc, at once! Boy, shut that window! 1 will not be blown 

away like an air-balloon for that, that The sentence went 

oif into grumbles, undeterminate, ferocious. It was perhaps as 
well, for the footboy’s ears as well as his mouth were open. 

"Mrs. hresnc, why do you not kindly see that all the rooms 
are heated just as the members like?” said a plaintive-voiced 
Hoyden, now popping a weary head round the third door, and 
looking at Mary with peevish self-pity. "Everybody in the 
reading-room is grumbling dreadfully. I wish you would. It 
gets on my nerves to hear grumbling. I do hate grumblers 
I’m sure everything is very annoying!’' 

"It is almost impossible to please all the members," pleaded 
Mary. 

"Oh, for goodness' sake, do not tell me any grievances ! I’m 
sure you try, yes, but my nerves will not let me listen to any 
complaints. I simply cannot endure it.” 

Mary straightened her neat little cuffs with a gesture of 
despair, and went away to wash her hands, soiled by the win. 
dow-sills. She kept a calm face, but her chin would just jerk 
up a bit. It did that sometimes when she was not aware that 
it was going to. On these occasions she found a sort of patient 
taciturnity her only refuge. She had been at th"' club some 
weeks now, and had begun to learn something of the tactics 
required of a paid lady who is under the direction of a multi- 
tude of her own sex. Luckily for herself she could hold her 
tongue. In this manner she had braved the infinite terrors of a 
divided feminine committee and come out scathless. It is true 
that some of the ladies said she had "no spirit." but one can 
survive that, buoyed up by a knowledge of having kept good- 
humoured through the carnage of four Wednesday morning 
committee meetings, devoted to trifling tastes of business sauced 
by strong personalities. 

To-day the whole place was in uproar, for. as usual at this 
time of the year, the hospitable Hoydens wer-' giving a larg'' 
entertainment, the main idea of which was for the members and 
their friends to meet social celebrities. The meeting of these 
lions consisted mainly in hearing them gobble answers to ques- 
tions between mouthfuls of snatched food over several other 


44 


A SHEPHERD 01' KENSINGTON 


persons backs and shoulders — that is to the majority. Of course, 
a chosen few must have got near enough to the celebrities to 
ask them the questions, since somebody in the crush certainly 
did interrogate them with strings of queries appropriate to 
their respective “shops”; but at the Hoydens, any being less in 
rank than the immediate cliques of Lady Jiberene and Miss 
Jacques, stood a poor chance of seeing much over the fence, 
unless very tall and very pushing, and entirely unscrupulous, 
selfish, and ill-mannered. This being a heavy price to pay for 
talking to an Australian footballer, or a Malay actress, many 
of the nicer Hoydens withdrew from the contest and talked to 
the limp and chipped men, the only ones of their sex to be got 
on these occasions, or ate buns and sweets, or retired in ominous 
silence instead. If the silence was ' afterwards productive, that 
is beside the point. 

At these reunions the costumes ranged wildly over every pos 
sible stage of aestheticism, also over every possible phase of 
utility, an even larger era. Far the quaintest, however, were 
those Puritanic in tone, but conscious of having made a conces- 
sion to the world of fashion, which combination produced Tria- 
non hats tilted at an angle more than rakish over hair not coiffed 
at all, but pulled back tightly anyhow into a walnut-like knob 
behind. This style enforced a draughty gap between hat and 
head terrible to behold, but quite unmoving to a Hoyden, a be- 
ing nothing if not philosophic over trifles. 

To-day Mrs. Gigshaw, the ever alert, was distinguished by 
.something coy in faded pink, with a bird’s wing and an ani- 
mal's tail, and a rodent’s head, and a tree’s fruit in it, the ex- 
treme abandon of which suggested a stall at a provision store 
on Christmas Eve. It seemed only to need little Union Jacks 
stuck in here and there to complete the effect. But Mrs. Gig- 
shaw was unconscious and quite happy, having a large held for 
her labours in the fact that Lady Jiberene and Miss Jacques 
both happened to be wild to get “in” with one particular cele- 
brity, a situation fraught with dramatic possibility to one so de- 
termined on mischief as that lady in gala mood. 

From the beginning of the afternoon she had studiously- 
worked at “setting” the one rival against the other in this con- 
nection, and now that the more formal part of the entertain- 
ment was over, the speeches concluded and the talk started, sh'’ 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


45 


bc-gan to find things humming in a manner after her own heart; 
for already Lady Jibercne had publicly snapped at Miss Jacques 
over the possession of a brilliant Canadian man singer, and 
Mifs Jacques, clutching at a wandering admiral, with a health 
cra;'.e and hair coming off in patches, who had been got there 
because his medical man had told him to cultivate intellectual 
interests, had retired with him to a higher aristocratic eleva- 
tion, and began to talk to him p itroiiisingly about "‘these poor 
dear clcrcr nobodies. ” But the patched admiral was disap- 
pointed, since the cleverness was all he had come for, and here 
he said, was a snob keeping him from enjoying it after all! He 
might just as well have been at his own club, where he could 
find the well-born and dull in larger quantities, and certainly in 
far more attractive form than this. For iVIiss Jacques was, to 
his unerring and unsparing masculine eye, nothing more than a 
gaunt old maid of fifty, uncommonly tall, so tall, indeed, that 
her long horse-profile and intensel}' solemn black eyes, showed 
above any average crowd, while the finery on her rather hearse- 
like toque never appeal'd to be quite clean. She had much pres- 
tige at the club on account of being “well-born”; everybod/' 
said, “Oh, but you see Miss Jacques is so ivcll-horn,” as an ex- 
cuse for anything either attractive or tiresome in her actions, 
aiifl a floating myth that she was cousin to a late Lord of Appeal, 
and niece or aunt to a peer, and godmother of an Honorurablc 
baby, protected her from many a stricture on her distinctly 
dingy fineries and loud dictatorial manners. 

But she had been so long accustomed to the feminine homage 
Of the club, that she was perfectly contented with herself and 
her pretensions, and failed to see the unhappy admiral wrig- 
gling with impatience. 

"T come here,” she said, “because — oh, well, why does one 
belong to things out of one’s own circle? Really, because one 
likes to study the people and their funny ways. I always wa5 
a great student of human nature ; nothing escapes me — nothing 
— not the smallest thing. Oh, no I” 

The admiral was not large, especially by comparison with 
the Amazon herself; but he decided to escape, nevertheless. 

“1 came,” he croaked angrily, “because / like to get awaj^’ 
from the funny ways of ‘one’s own circle,’ as you call it. I 
came because T do like to see a pretty woman sometimes, though 


>46 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON. 


I am getting old. and we have none in oiir crew. Ihcre are 
about three in this crowd. There’s that singer from Americi, 
.'ind that good-natured IMrs. D’Arblay, and ” 

“Mrs. D’Arblay? Oh no— really. But they are quite new 
people. Why, one never heard of them yesterday !’’ 

"You can," said the admiral, taking a meat lozenge slowly, 
“be heard of so much yesterday that you belong to it and oughi 
to be struck ofif the calendar. The only other charming person 
here is a lady I am told is the secretary — perfectly charming, 
lovely, grace and breeding itself. 1 only saw her for a moment 
but I wish she would come back.’’ 

This was too much even for Miss Jacques, who stalked angril; 
away and confided to her friend Miss Hyde, still in severely 
golfing costume, thought the drawing-room was full of chiffons, 
that poor dear old Admiral Saytor was getting into his second 
childhood. 

“His first,” said Miss Hyde laconically. “He never had an 
other. I’m told he was the wickedest boy Eton ever turned out. 
He betted on the Derby before ever he cut his teeth, and cheated 
at bridge at three. It’s time he was young for a change !’’ 

Meanwhile Lady Jiberene was getting on famously with her 
celebrity, who was the unconscious bone of contention between 
the rivals, and Miss Jacques flew round the crowded room 
chattering hysterically to hide her confusion and indignation, 
followed by the irritating comments of Mrs. Gigshaw, who ap- 
peared to-day to have the capacity to swoop out of every corner 
and cranny and meet her prey, with the oblique eyes of a puss 
cat and a smile of world-embracing benevolence. But even 
Mrs. Gigshaw only persecuted one of the rival parties at a timr, 
and after pouncing out from behind a bank of ferns and hydran- 
geas to squeak a taunting remark to Miss Jacques for the fifth 
time, she came to the conclusion that Lady Jiberene had had 
enough triumph for one afternoon, and that it was high time 
her ministry was overthrown. So she shot her little slit eyes 
about for a weapon and suddenly beheld one, an excellent one, 
no other indeed, than the great Mrs. Courtman, approaching in 
regal manner through the crowd, having just arrived, the guest, 
indeed, of Miss Jacques. As a matter of fact, i^diss Jacqu':'s had 
boasted a little of her coming, for to the Hoydens, Mrs. Court - 
man, with her wealth and beauty, represented a faction of gay 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


47 


society th:it they liked to see and be on nodding terms with, 
although they, as intellectuals, professed to despise it. In thr 
crowd Miss Jacques had not seen her friend arrive. 

Now Lady Jiberene," said Mrs. Gigshaw confidentially, her 
wicked eyes dancing, "there is Mrs. Courtman, and no one tO 
receive her! Do just please greet her, won't you? I see h-^r 
looking about for Miss Jacques, who has apparently quite for 
gotten her duties. It is so awkward. You know her— do go 
to the rescue.” 

Lady Jiberene, ever hospitable, turned to the celebrity with a 
word of expressive apology, and forced her way up to Mrs. 
Courtman in the crush. Immediately she had done so Mrs. 
Gigshaw turned to IMiss Jacques, whose melancholy heavy- 
lidded eyes were short-sighted, and who still had not seen her 
guest, saying — 

"Miss Jacques, do take pity on” (she mentioned the cele- 
brity), "Lady Jiberene has just deserted him in the most bare- 
faced manner for one of her smart idols. See, he is going into 
the tea-room alone. It shouldn't bo allowed. 

The words had immediate effect. Miss Jacques, who had been 
wild for this opportunity, stalked eagerly after the celebrity and 
constituted herself the ministering angel of his tea, and her rival 
was ousted. Then Mrs. Gigshaw sat down on a velvet covered 
sofa and fanned herself, chuckling with unholy satisfaction. 
When Lady Jiberene found she had lost her celebrity, and Miss 
Jacques her guest-of-honour, there would be a scene. And for 
it, Mrs. Gigshaw waited as patient people wait in queues for 
matinees. 

But Florence, the newly arrived guest, was a little bored by 
the fussing crowd, which she called “common,” and not in the 
l)est of humours, after a “rushing” day devoted to hard pleasure. 

"If Miss Jacques is too busy to be found, never mind,” she 
said. "I only ran in after two other affairs and a lunch party, 
as I have never seen the Hoydens and Miss Jacques would not 
take ‘No.' But it really does not matter. One understands these 
oddities. So intellectual !” 

"Oh, but we will find her,” said delighted Lady Jiberene. 
"It is such a crowd, you know. And her eyesight is — failing. ’ 
She put it that way rather unkindly, though poor Aliss Jacques 
had always been short-sighted, from a girl. She fussed along in 


48 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


front of the imposingly clad Mrs. Coiirtman, leading the way 
to the tea-room, meaning to find the lady in question. Over 
the heads of all, far in the distance, towered the unmistakable 
figure of her unconscious rival, and next to it — yes, in deep 
conversation — that of the celebrity ! Lady Jibercnc s heart stoo'l 
still. Mrs. Courtinan. languid and put out, did not even look 
into the large apartment, feeling piqued at having to hunt fo’ 
a hostess in this fashion, 'fhe crowd was rough, and stared at 
her rich attire when it did not actually trample on it, and she 
was really eager to get away from a scene where she was no.- 
appreciated. "Come,” she said to Lady Jiberene. “Do not let 
us go into that crush ! I really cairt. I will find a cool seat up 
there by those ferns on the stairs and rest a few minutes. No 
doubt she will come shortly. So kind of you to bother.” 

This was Lady Jiberene’s moment of temptation. Should she 
point out Miss Jacques, or should she let her bear the punish 
ment of her deeds? 

She wavered a moment, then turned and went with Mrs. 
Courtman to the cool enclosure she had indicated, without sav- 
ing a word about her rival’s whereabouts. 

“You are quite a God-send in this crowd!” said Mrs. Couri 
man. “So good of you to greet me ! Really, I should have 
turned back in sheer terror it' you hadn’t.” 

“I am delighted,” said her companion, with sincerity. She 
had long wanted to know Mrs. Courtman better, having only 
met her once in a purely formal way, and here was her oppor- 
tunity to hand. They chattered on amicably, and she began to 
think the exchange from the celebrity was not a bad one. '1'-; 
her Mrs. Courtman represented an inner world of social things, 
that even her own money and capacity for entertaining and get- 
ting about had never quite reached ; her parties in Sussex Place, 
Hyde Park, were many and various and crowded, and she went 
in hotly for protecting birds’ wings, and for a little respectable 
socialism, and music patronage, but even then Mrs. Courtman 
whirled in circles she could only see soaring in a far sky. Be- 
ing a modern Liberal she was naturally eager about these 
things. 

She was popular enough in her own way, the wife of a cit'/ 
knight, rich and very full of energy ; a woman of about forty- 
five, with a large, broad, kind face, rather highly coloured, and 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


49 


suggestive in the main of geniality, except that when you really 
got into conversation with her you found that she had not the 
faintest sense of humour. 

She ga/ed blankly, a little shocked, at any jokes not to be 
distinctly found in Punch and even to these she said, “Ha-ha,” 
punctilioush' every week, and then turned with relief to an- 
other journal and read the account of the wedding garments of 
a lady of aristocratic birth, of whom she had never heard, and 
of whom she would never know anything beyond these strangely, 
personal facts. 

Now as these two acquaintances chatted together in their 
alcove, Mary Fresne came out of one of the side rooms, on 
some business of the place, and passed down the stairs clos“ 
to them. As she reached them she looked up and caught sight 
of Mrs. Courtman, who was speaking to her companion and did 
not observe her. Suddenly she too looked up, and gave a little 
cry of dismay. 

“Oh — you!” she said, half under her breath. 

Mary had gone white, and for a second had hesitated, arrested 
by a face out of the old days so suddenly before her in this 
unexpected place. 

“Why, Flor ” she began involuntarily, and then perhaps 

remembered that it would be better for her to leave her old 
friend to make the first advance under the altered circumstances. 
The last five years had made her pitifully sensitive to changes. 

Mrs. Courtman got up, her face as white as Clary’s, and made 
as if to speak, but Mary had, with swift, bitter recollection of a 
possible reason for her silence, bowed quickly and passed on. 
and had disappeared into one of the olfice rooms downstairs be- 
fore Florence could collect her wits. 

“Do you know her?” said Lady Jiberene. with curiosity in 
every nerve. 

“Yes, yes, we are acquainted,” said Mrs. Courtman abstracted- 
ly ; “we were once, that is, in India. Rut what is she doing 
here ?” She looked quite disturbed. 

“.She is our new secretary. I myself recommended her, hav 
ing know her for two years or more. She really needed the 
post, I believe.” 

“I sec.” Mrs. Courtman looked troubled and flushed. 

“I hope there is nothing — nothing, you know " began Lady 


50 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSIXGTOX 


Jiberene with infinitely questioning eyes. She was one quiver- 
ing note of interrogation. 

“Why do you ask?” said Florence Courtman sharply, siuf 
denly conscious of this. 

“Oh, pray do not be offended. Only 1 thought you looked er 
— doubtful, and perhaps upset by meeting Mrs. Frcsnc. You 
must excuse me, really. You see I myself recommend her for 
the post rather on my own judgment, than on any real knowlec\,- 
of her antecedents. She seemed a very nice, well-bred woman, 
but now, as a friend of yours ” 

“Oh yes, yes. That is all right. But may I ask how you 
know her?” 

“I met her in connection with some of my schemes for the 
poor and suffering. 1 try to do what I can, you know. One n. 
very busy in these ways. She used to do some reporting and 
odd bits of literary work for Calvin Hopper in tha^ paper of his. 
The World's Trumpet. She was sent to me fairly often to re- 
port things, and I was interested, as she seemed so pretty and 
poor, and not quite the type for such a rough sort of life. She 
does not look too strong, either.” 

“No,” said Mrs. Courtman. 

“I expect it was the hardship,” continued Lady Jiberene un- 
consciously. “It would try a delicately nurtured person dread- 
fully, 1 should think, and I always thought her that. She 
seemed to have some tiny means of her own, but she was alway.s 
glad of work. I supposed there was a mystery about her — sh-^ 
has never spoken of her affairs to any one that I know of — but 
Calvin Hopper found her diligent and careful, and so T risked 
putting here in here. She has given satisfaction so far.” 

“Yes, yes. You seem to have been very kind,” said Mrs. 
Courtman in a constrained voice. “Do you know, I think I will 
be going? This place is hot. If you see my friend Miss Jacques, 
will you kindly tell her I looked in ? Thanks awfully and ever 
so for being so sweet as to entertain me. Yes, by motor is out- 
side.” They went down to the hall. 

“Good-bye,” said Lady Jiberene, her curiosity deeply disap- 
pointed after all. “Such a pleasure for me. But you make me 
quite uneasy — I don’t quite know why — about Mrs. Fresne.” 

“No. Do I? Why?” 

“Your manner when you met her — your reticence ” 


A SHEPilERD OF KENSINGTON 


51 


"Oh, really," said Mrs. Courtman losing her readily lost tern 
per; "how careful one has to be in a woman’s club! I was 
ni'..r<.ly astonished to see her, that was all. One’s old acquaint- 
ances sometimes come upon one like ghosts — I hate ghosts.” 
An idea sliot through her quick mind, however ; would these 
stupid, literal-minded women infer sonicthing to Mary’s disad- 
vantage by the mere fact of her own confusion? They were 
<iuite capable of it. A momentary struggle went on in her breast. 
Her rich fur coat was being put on to her by the club footman, 
and Lady Jiberene was still watching her face, eager for a 
crumb of information. She said to the servant sharply — 

"1 wish to speak to the club secretary.” 

He went to a door at the side of the hall, while Lady Jiberene 
poured forth a fussy ilow of remonstrances and apologies, exas- 
perating to hear. Mrs. Courtman hardly listened, but when 
Mary came out walked straight up to her, and taking her hand 
almost brusquely said — 

“How do you do? Didn’t you pass on the stairs just now^ 
isn’t it ages since we met ? I hear you arc here as secretary. 
How clever of you! But you always were very clever, and all 
that — so superior to us all at Lahore. Do you remember? I hear 
you arc doing splendidly here. How intellectual you must be?' 

Then seeing a pained flush on Mary’s brow% she shook her 
hand again, and nodding and smiling though her face was deadly 
wliite, she swept away, chattering to Lady Jiberene, and got into 
her electric car wdth much clatter and fuss. 

• Once inside it and awuiy she tore at her right glove (pale lav- 
ender, in compliment to Lent) and wrenched it off, splitting it 
right across in her fury and flinging it out of the grougham win- 
dow into the muddy street. 

"To have to touch her hand!” she said. "To have to smile 
and patronise and be bountiful ! I hate her for making me so 
miserable — I wish I’d never gone near the place ! Am I always 
to come across her like this? Is she everywhere, and always 
the injured innocent? But I couldn’t kt I’nosc stupid block- 
headed women do her any more harm. I’ve sent her to the gut 
ter, but I can’t quite trample on her — even I ! I haven’t sunk 
so low as that. Oh, after this I’ll go to a lawyer and get some- 
thing settled on her privately — I’m sure it can be done. I shan't 
last in my bed if I don’t. .And I do hate h -r eyes. They ar-:- 


52 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


like a dead person’s — what is it? 1 used to think they were 
pretty. They’re hideous. She is. She’s like a bad dream. 
My luck is so bad just now that something must, shall be done 
about this. I don’t care what Mr. Cartyn says. I’m sure if I 
make her comfortable, settle a decent income on her so that she 
needn’t work there it will be just the same. God isn’t so particu- 
lar as all that. But I must have peace and comfort. I wish 1 
wasn’t so unselfish by nature — most women wouldn’t bother 'i 
bit about it. It was only such a little thing, after all. And can 
I help the consequences? Ugh! That is really the worst of 
clergymen — no wonder the Church of England is not so crammed 
as some of those nice new religions where they don’t bother so 
about sins and things. I’m sure saying I am sorry to a clergy- 
man in a vestry ought to be enough. It’s quite trying enough, 
especially when he is nice-looking. I know some churcTies where 
they would think I was really good after that, and give me i 
blessing and say no more. What more, really, can you expect?” 

She fussed home to dinner, dressing with extra care and even 
extravagance, but in silver and mauve in compliment to the 
Church’s season, and went with a lively party to see a play of 
deeply allegorical and semi-religious significance put on the 
boards to suit such happy casuists. Later on they all had supper 
consisting mainly of fish and eggs, at a smart restaurant. The 
cheery little tables decorated with Parma violets, in similar deli- 
cacy of compliment. She chattered bridge to a bridge-maniac 
on her left, and carefully explained to him that in Lent she only- 
played for penny points, as everybody admitted that there was 
nothing wrong in that, was there? 

Then she went home alone, tired out and hot-eyed and faded 
“He ought to appreciate my efforts,” she said; I’m only doing '{ 
to please him. He was my friend first, not hers. But if she 

dares to No, no. He is only interested in her in the unin 

teresting way clergymen often are. He think’s she’s a widow 
in distress. I’m a widow too. He is my friend, not hers. But 
now I’ve made up my mind. I’ll settle the matter myself.” 


CHAPTER V 


’L HE vicar came into the room with an air of bustling resigna- 
tion. It was the day following the Hoydens’ party, and Lady 
Jiberenc had called at the vicarage, her footman thundering on 
the severely ecclesiastical door as though he actually menaced 
the Church itself. 

She was dreadfully plaintive. 

“Oh, dear Mr. Cartyn,” she said, “you must forgive me for 
coming when I am sure you are busy writing sermons, but I 
do just want to ask you one little question. It is about Mrs. 
Fresne. Do you — can you tell me— is there — er — well, I want 
to know if you know anything of her antecedents?” 

He stood up before her, erect and resentful in the dreary mas- 
culine room, that in his house did duty for a drawing-room 
That is to say, in it he interviewed persons of consequence that 
he disliked. On the grey-blue walls, still unchanged since the 
tenancy of a former vicar's wife, there were exceedingly chilly 
looking pictures, copies of very leggy Peruginos in black frames. 
The}' were the sort of pictures that made you feel good without 
doing anything to prove it. In fact, if you hung your house with 
them, you felt rather exonerated from ordinary human experi- 
ence altogether, just as a person who has procured a bishops 
sanction to abstain from fasting, feels rather better than a per- 
son who fasts. 

A bookcase, full of the works of theology that Mr. Cartyn 
did not approve of, as being somewhat old-fashioned and severe, 
flanked by a row of chairs, as though arranged for a ghostly 
board-meeting, did duty for the entire furniture of one long, 
dreary wall. Against this rather cheerless background his dark 
brown, thin face and hair touched with grey looked forbidding. 
He cleared his throat, and motioned his fussy, much-ruffled, 
and feathery visitor to a black chair stuck in the middle of the 
room. Then he said — 

“Why do you ask?” 


54 


A SHEPHERD OF KEXSIXGTOX 


‘‘Oh, don't ilhnk 1 doubt her or anything like that. But you 

gave her your relerence, 1 recollect. I thought you might 

IX’en she pauseci at the rather straight glance of his eyes. 

“Ves, certainly. But may 1 inquire why the question is brougin 
up, Lady Jiberene?” 

“Oh, it is really nothing! But you sec she is counted as my 
friend — 1 mean at the iloydcn Club, you know. 1 recomemnded 
her. I took quite an interest in her from the first. 1 really did 
One likes to help these poor ladies. One ought. Bm of course, 
i don’t know very much of her, not really. And yesterday 1. 
was made a little uneasy by the manner of a lady, who it seems 
knew her years ago ” 

“What lady?” he put in sharply. 

“Mrs. Courtman. Do you know her?" 

There w-as a moment’s silence. “Yes, I know a Mrs. Court- 
man. But what has she said to you about this Mrs. I'rcsne?" 
said the vicar, calming his voice purposely. 

“Oh, practically nothing. Xo. Only she came to the club 
and saw Mrs. Fresne there, and I must say I didn’t quite lik^ 
her manner. She looked — well — as though she had some infor- 
mation she could have given.” 

“Eve often seen ladies look like that,” said the vicar. He 
shook his head slightly. Lady Jiberene did not see the sar- 
casm. 

“Well, yes, they do,” she went on. “It is a very unpleasant 
thing, Mr. Cartyn, to feel that one has been too impulsive in 

giving one’s — one‘s ” she was going to say patronage, but 

she did not quite like the way his left foot was tapping. And his 
eyes were on one of the Peruginos, not on her at all. Xo woman 
likes that, however free from coquetry. “One’s ” she stut- 

tered angrily. He stopped fidgeting when she stopped for want 
of a word and put in — 

“Kindness?” 

Her full pink face went a little pinker. 

“I wish to assist her,” she said sharply. “But Mrs. Courtman, 
without meaning to, did look odd when they met.” 

“Did they meet?” he said quickly. 

“Yes.” 

“Where ?” 

“At our club — yesterday.” 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


55 


He nodded, his eyes fixed abstractedly on hers, thinking anx- 
iously. She rose. 

“Well, Mr. Cartyn, you seem unwilling to tell me anything,' 
she said, a tritle huffily. When she became huffy she ruffled all 
her feathers and feather boas, like a fierce little hen. 

He was recalled. “Oh, 1 am ready to repeat my entire and 
full responsibility with regard to that lady,” he said with uneasy 
formality; “if that is what you require?” She passed th'^ matter 
off, too annoyed with him to say more, and fussed away. 

i\s a matter of fact, she had the previous afternoon returned 
from escorting Mrs. Courtman to her motor bubbling over with 
excitement and curiosity. That her little protegee, the secretary, 
should cause such a tlutter in the calm hauteur of the great 
Mrs. Courtman, was a fact that Lady Tiberene viewed as full or 
significance. Either, she said to herself, her disinterested philan- 
trophy had brought her ;i huge “find" in the social market, or 
else — her blue eyes darkened as she conceived the horrid thought ! 
— she had nursed an adder in her bosom. Now a condition of 
affairs making it doubtful whether you friend is an asset or an 
a.dder makes matters very cotnplicated. It is really difficult to 
preserve the exact balance that is required to treat both charac- 
ters with decorum at one and the same time, keeping always an 
(vp''n door ready should the half suspected snake rear its head, 
and at the same time, keeping one’s eternal devotion ready in 
one's pocket should the asset suddenly become a paying concern. 
Mary may have noticed a certain faintly hysterical character in 
the nature of Lady Jiberene’s smiles and advances, on the days 
following the reception, and have puzzled her own direct and 
very simple brain as to what to make of them. They were at 
least spasmodic and full of odd jerks and contradictions, and she 
found that she must gradually learn to take no notice of such 
oddities, and to accept them as one of the natural results of 
accepting any one’s patronage, however kindly meant. 

As she went home, the night of the party, she gave way to 
worrying reflections, recalled by this living ghost of an old storv. 
That was it — the old story. She leant her tired head back against 
the 'bus corner — she was sitting in the scat nearest the door — 
and let the jogging vehicle shake her, and the lights in the shops 
they rumbled past flash into her weary closed lids. After all, 
she said to herself, one can do no more than -be honest; if an 


56 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


evil world will say otherwise, let it. There was some inner part 
of her, she said to herself, that nothing could harm, let her take 
her pride in that, and against her these shafts would be hurled 
quite uselessly. It takes .some grit to be a practical philosopher 
in the corner of a stuffy ’bus at ten o’clock at night, when om 
is very tired, and the world seems a large, rushing, cruel place 
of toil and oppression, but she managed it. She might even have 
said with Shakespeare at that moment — 

“I am that I am : he that would level 
At my abuses, reckons up his own.” 

Yet even the pluckiest philosophy shudders and faints a little 
at the spectacle of an old friend turned acquaintance, patronising 
acquaintance, and she would not have been human if a little 
thrill of contempt had not shaken her, when she remembered 
Florence’s tone. 

But when she got back to the club next day, she found things 
at an exciting pitch. The air was simply electric with mystery. 
Every moment threatened a catastrophe. The two parties, now 
at last brought to open hostilities, were stalking about the place 
m a fever of expectation. Everybody was whispering in corners 
or at little tables, and the amount of lorgnettes used against quite 
innocent persons was terrihc in itself, and the morally slain 
strewed the corridors. Even some of the costumes were warlike. 
Mrs. Gigshaw went about fairly chuckling with delight. It was 
a ministerial crisis of her own making. Everywhere one heard 
rumblings and rumors of war. 

“Yes, and Lady Jiberene positively waylaid and caught Miss 
Jacques’ guest, kept her to herself, and then packed her off with 
out even informing poor Miss Jacques that she had been !” 

“Disgusting,” said Muriel Hyde ; “but what can you expect 
She was always bad form.” 

“Well, really, whatever she was there is no excuse for be 
haviour like that ! Even city knights who originally made soau 
don’t expect their wives to play down quite so low,” said the 
first speaker. 

Miss Hyde, the boyish and fresh-coloured, snorted wtih reson- 
ance. 

“I can’t think what you all were about to let such a pushing. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


57 


tiresome woman get such a hold here,” she said. “The way she 
rushed in that secretary of hers was abominable, and quite out- 
side decent rules. I do like fair play.” 

“Yes, well that was not nice, no, not quite in our usual form,” 
admitted the other, a lady for the moment unattached distinctly 
to either camp, but inclining towards that generalled by Miss 
Jacques, on account of having as yet received no card of invita- 
tion to Lady Jiberene’s numerous receptions, though she had 
lished determinedly in weather fair and foul. 

“1 hat horrible woman, Mrs. Gigshaw, is going about saying 
she is astonished at the whole thing,” said Miss Hyde. “I don’t 
suppose she is. She probably had a hand in setting one against 
the other. Still the fact remains that Lady Jiberene was guilty 
of a most unsportsmanlike action. I vote we let her see that 
the club objects.” 

“She must see already,” giggled the other. “There has been 
quite a coolness ever since that evening. I believe Miss Jacques 
•gave that secretary of hers a good jacketing over some other 
matter, just by way of protest. Really, I don’t blame her.” 

“Hard on the secretary — but she shouldn't be pushed by such 
people,” said the laconic IMiss Hyde. “Put not your trust in the 
city! I’m happy to say wc arc ‘county,’ and keep clear of mob 
outsiders.” 

xMiss Jacques was just at the moment enjoying a rush of un- 
looked-for popularity, a turn in the tide of Hoyden opinion con- 
sequent on her unfair treatment by Lady Jiberene, or what was 
everywhere reported as such ; and Lady Jiberene was collecting 
round her her regiment of mercenaries and was preparing to 
do gallant battle in her own defence, feeling the charge again.st 
herself to be an unfair one. Miss Jacques was for a moment a 
kind of lionised martyr, a role she played exceedingly well, 
with her long, pale, tragedy face, and melancholy heavy-lidded 
eyes, as she stalked about the club rooms in that hearse-like head- 
gear, and collected adherents by repeating her tale of woe to 
all who would listen. She was so successful at this time that 
.she even produced some spring flowers in her old winter toque — 
it is true they were dirty white laburnum over from last sum- 
mer, and were niixed with bronze autumn leaves — but they were 
intended both as tribute to the budding season, and as an open 
sign of crested defiance to her enemies. So Lady Jiberene be- 


58 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTOK 


came exasperated, with the truly awful and startling result that 
she suddenly issued invitations to an immense evening reception 
in the very nick of time, just catching any of her wavering fol- 
lowers on the shins, by leaving them out of her list. Great ex- 
citement prevailed. 

The affair was to take place in a fortnight, bringing it to the 
week following Easter week, and there were murmured hints, 
mat it was to be on an immense scale, larger than usual and 

much more crushed, and was to be studded with social lions, 

as a pound cake with plums. Was there a Hoyden who did 

not secretly yearn to get foot under that striped marquee and 

tread those sandwiched halls, whatever expressions of indignant 
independence they might individually utter? Certainly there was 
a secret and passionate longing on all sides to find out who and 
what would attend the festivity, and those of Lady Jiberene’s 
club-fellows who were not asked themselves, had each managed 
to post a special spy representing herself among the ranks of 
the chosen. 

But Lady Jiberene threw a preliminary shell or two before 
fighting operations were actually due to begin. 

“One hears such interesting things,” she said to a group about 
her one day. “Our dear, pretty Mrs. Fresne is, I am told, quite 
a somebody, and has seen very different days in India before 
she lost her husband. She moved in quite the regulation se<, 
visited at the vice-regal court, and so on. Really, most gratify- 
ing, after one has tried to do something to help her !” 

“Have you persuaded her to talk of herself at last, then?” 
said one. “Fm sure I have tried quite often, and in the most 
delicate ways, but I never could get a word, though I screwed 
and screwed !” 

“Oh, I have it on better authority. I have it,” said Lady 
Jiberene, glancing round the group, “from Mrs. Courtman !” 

The bomb was hurled with great effect. “She and I,” she 
continued, “have been friends for some time, and it seems she 
knew Mrs. Fresne some years ago in India. It is all very in- 
teresting, as dear Mrs. Fresne may have — has, I believe — al- 
ready had a few pricks to endure here owing to the strange 
aversion of others. But I shall reinstate her so far as I am able 
by inviting her to my party” 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


59 


Tile Eomb here burst into a thousand pieces. A few of the 
projectiles went on devastating. 

“Mrs. Courtman is coming, and will like to meet her,’’ added 
Lady Jiberene thoughtfully. The group, which had been sitting 
Tound in a ring here got up almost as one woman, and darted 
off in different directions to spread tlie extraordinary news. 
Like the radiations of a star they spread out their wild course 
in all directions, leaving Lady Jiberene with a faithful crony 
only, a move which she seemed quite to expect, and for which 
she indirectly had deliberately worked. But Mary, when caught 
alive round a stuffy office corner, by the heroine of the hour, and 
invited in so many words to the party, was aghast and full of 
excuses. 

“It’s sweet of you to think of me, dear Lady Jiberene,” she 
said in a flustered manner. “But you must let me decline, in- 
deed you must. Nowadays that sort of gaiety is quite out of my 
line. I have had much misfortune. I never got into society. I 
haven’t done so for years.” 

“Oh, but you must noiij, you know,” said Lady Jiberene, hi 
her most saccharine manner. 

“But — thank you so much — only, you know, real^q I am so 
poor. To tell you the truth I haven’t any evening clothes !” 

“Oh, you arc so pretty. In any clothes you would look quite 
delight. Now do say you will come — just to please me.-" 

“Please, please Lady Jiberene, let me think it over. To please 
you, who have always been so kind to me, I would do much. 
But don’t you see that as I never have gone out for so long “ 

“Oh, of course. But now that you are at the Hoydens you 
are ‘somebody,’ and can’t avoid publicity. Do come. -\Irs. Cour^ 
man is - coming. I have seen her since that day you met her. 
She asked after you, and said she should like to meet yon 
again.” 

“Did she? That was very nice of her. But, dear Lady 
Jiberene, see how smart you will all be! After all, I am only a 
poor woman who earns her own living, am I not ? Oh, do let 
me off, and I will be eternally grateful to you for asking me. 
But — but — I live in a corner of life, you knov.a T am not for 
any light and sunshine.” 

However, Lady Jiberene was obdurate. She even played on 
Mary’s gratitude, knowing quite well that one so sensitive to 


60 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


kindness would hardly like to defy the very donor of her means 
of livelihood in such a manner, and for reasons so vague. To 
Lady Jiberene Mary was only shy. She — good, hardy, unsensi- 
tive soul, had no secrets, and she could not understand what 
she called a “nice” woman having any either. She had decided 
in her own mind that Mary was a “nice” woman. Would she 
not listen for hours to descriptions of Lady Jiberene’s childrens’ 
illnesses, and the reasons why they had certain doctors and den- 
tists? — the sure signs of a “nice” woman! Would she not smile 
patiently while Lady Jiberene descanted on the doings of her 
son at Eton, and how he had become captain of his house’s team, 
and could wear his house’s colours, and was reported to be sur- 
passingly good at quite everything except the mere alphabet? 
What better or more distinct proof of “niceness’ than this? 

So Mary, distinguished and ratified by Cecil Jiberene’s mea 
sles, or Eric’s diphtheria, and Doris’ Italian lessons, was ex- 
pected to appear at my lady’s party, in order to crush the enemy 


CHAPTER VI 


There are some women, even in London, to whom an invitation 
is an invitation, pure and simple. Into that idyllic state of 
mind no suspicion enters that the harmless looking printed card 
in the third person expresses more than a bland desire on the 
part of somebody to give you pleasure. Experience after experi- 
ence to the sordid contrary will never happily shake this dear 
belief in childlike minds. 

Mary’s was one of such. 

All that bothered her was a frock. She had nothing suitable, 
except a very, very ancient and soiled affair at the bottom of a 
box, amongst her possessions. 

On coming home from the club, she started matters by lighting 
her sitting-room fire, in a first attempt after inspiration. ' The 
nights were still cold, but luckily the wood was resinous and 
snapped joyously in the burning, and it may have sparkled into 
her imagination, for, as her mind flew over depressing calcula- 
tions of cheap and common silk “robes” bought half made, and 
capable of being used up later as ordinary frocks — she had deter- 
mined to wear black — it suddenly occurred to her that she had 
some exquisite Indian hand-embroidery that should help, at 
least, to save her pocket. 

She went to a deep box in her bedroom and got this out. It 
was black, soft, silky stuff of the crepe-de-chine order, and a 
design of grapes and vine leaves was beautifully and simply 
worked in silver. There was not much of it, but enough with 
care to make a raison d’Hre for a black evening dress, and by 
the addition of some more silk, and yet more skill, a very modest 
and graceful garment. Those silver grapes decided her. 

“After all,” she said, “I am not so very old. And that sort 
of thing cheers one up. Lately, I have been thinking I was per- 
haps overdoing this solitary life. Lady Jiberene is a dear. I’ve 
half a mind to go !” 

So, on her earliest opportunity, she chose the black soft silk 


62 


A SHEPHERD OE KENSINGTON 


to go with the embroidery, and carefully calculating her ri 
sources, bought enough and proceeded to make up the dress. 
She was clever with her needle, and her taste was simple and 
good, but it was a good thing for her that Easter intervenea, 
and gave her a fortnight’s grace in which to complete the gar- 
ment, for it had to be stitched at very late at nights and it got 
along only slowly in consequence. 

But it was to her the symbol in some sort of returning hope 
and youth after dark years of trouble, and even in some way con- 
nected with those dead jonquils in the Benares bowl. 

Thrifty being, she would not cut the embroidery, and arranged 
it to fall clinging to the figure in front, making a directoire panel 
that melted imperceptibly into the plain, soft, trailing black of 
the rest. The little open square at the top, edged with silver, 
showed her fine neck, and her bright brown hair shone out in 
warm contrast. She had no evening cloak, so she used up a 
shepherd’s plaid one day she had, with a fluffy shawl inside it, 
and when the great night came, slipped out of her drear retreat 
and gained a ’bus whose route brought her to the Park, dropping 
her close to Sussex Place. She had to put on a hat — her little 
shabby street would have shrieked, might even have stoned her, 
had she ventured forth from its shades with her head uncovered 
— and in this most humble manner made her way to the great 
festivity. She could tell the house far in the distance by the 
flood of light streaming from it, and the string of carriages. 

There was the striped marquee of Hoyden celebrity, meander- 
ing out from the hall door and Greek pillars, right across the 
pavement. Carriages were arriving in dozens, and this guest 
felt meek indeed, as, much to the scorn of a footman, she slipped 
into the glorified and brilliantly lighted aisle from the side, and 
made her way up the red-carpeted steps to the inner glories 
beyond, hat and all. The very cloakroom maids stared at that 
hat. They could not conceive of a lady coming in one. They 
could not, however, conceive of the extremely personal nature of 
the remarks that Mary’s neighbours in Loder Street would have 
been likely to make had she gone without it. And, as she said 
to herself philosophically, the maids’ bad opinion was the easier 
to bear of the two terrors. 

But divested of her old check cloak and shawl, she created 
another impression. Even the maids saw the fine carriage of 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


63 


the head, and the uncommon silver embroidery of her attire, 
and when she was shown up to the reception-room, she was a 
little overwhelmed by finding that, for a person living in “life’s 
corners” she attracted an amazing amount of attention by just 
walking into the room. 

Ihc crush was all Hoyden tradition had painted it. If you 
were standing up, you had to remain so, and if sitting down, 
nothing could effect your uprising save a united effort on the 
part of the entire row of victims huddled together, just as a 
number of persons tightly packed in a church pew must move in 
concert or not at all. Not unhappily for jMary, she was per- 
mitted to remain standing, and she began after five minutes to 
be thankful that she had brought a little Indian fan, of mother- 
of-pearl and silver, that away in the Loder Street lodgings had 
seemed really too grand. Now, in the bla.ze of colour and jewels 
around her, it looked a simple enough toy. As for her dress T 
was nothing against the “creations” in the midst of which she 
found herself fixed. Lady Jiberene was most radiant and fussy, 
as usual, and dragged her further into the blaze of the chief 
salon, rather tactlessly “pleased to see her looking so pretty 
and so appropriately dressed,” though she meant the praise 
kindly. In such a mixed crowd any garment would have passed 
muster, so far as that went. 

Alary had completed her greeting of her hostess, and was 
standing a little to one side, deeply interested in the movements 
of one of the ladies seated in a crammed row by the wall, who. 
seeing a tall and beautiful stranger wearing a gown of real lace, 
momentarily stranded close to her, had picked up a flounce of 
tliis in one hand and was examining it closely through her 
lorgnette! The owner of the lace attire was unconscious of th'’ 
impudent scrutiny going on behind her own back, and looke<l 
back a little coldly at Mary, over whose ready face a ripple of 
amazed laughter was beginning to dimple. Just then Mary turned 
aside and beheld Cartyn struggling through a solid group to gel 
at her. She impulsively met him half-way, unspeakably glad in 
the loneliness of this crush to see his thin, expressive face turned 
genially to hers. They made a little island to themselves directly 
he succeeded in gaining her. She, at least, forgot the rest of 
the people with that completeness of oblivion only possible in a 
hopeless crush, and he, his eyes on the vision of her first appear- 


64 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


ing in her true class and its adornments, apparently forgot even 
Idmself too. The light of deep admiration and regard in his 
face would have been as clear as the rose-light of dawn to any- 
body who had chanced to look or care, but no one did, and 
only effect was a real rose-glow on Mary’s frank face and fair 
neck, as with a sudden leap of her heart she felt its potency 
herself. 

‘T knew you were coming," said Cartyn ; “Lady Jiberene told 
me you were. I’ve been waiting to see you. Aren’t you late?’’ 

“Why, yes. But I can’t leave my dear Hoydens just when 1 
want. And besides — I came in a ’bus !’’ 

He laughed. 

“Like that?’’ 

“Oh, dear no — in an old cape and hat. Loder Street would 
never have survived evening garments.’’ 

“Well,’’ he said, “it would be a pity to dazzle the ginger rab- 
bit ! Do you remember him? — in a cage at the corner of your 
street? I always fancy he guards you like a watchdog.’’ 

“Do you?” 

“Una and a rabbit ! Why not ?” 

“Oh, it’s more homely than a lion, so I don’t mind. Besides 
some lions are really hard to tell from rabbits or guinea-pigs, 
especially those in Trafalgar Square.” 

“Some lions are guinea-pigs,” said Cartyn. “Do you see that 
man over there — the one with long hair and a badge of sorts? — 
he is one of the lions of the evening, but will do anything you 
ask him almost for a guinea. You can combine the several 
qualities of each. But come and talk to me — have you been 
arranging jonquils lately?” 

He piloted her over to a cooler seat, and they stayed there, 
she never knew how long, in a conversation purely delightful to 
them both, because surrounded by gaiety and chatter, it had 
no interruptions and no special claims to be serious. For the 
first time, Cartyn saw her separated from her unutterable sad- 
ness ; saw what she had been in the happier past, and could be 
in the future, the ideal of most good men — merry, kind, tender, 
yet reserved, remote, and stilly heroic. He could not guard his 
eyes as he guarded his tongue. Again and again, as he talked 
his merry nonsense, the strange picture of this frank little 
woman struggling for daily bread in undeserved adversity, made 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


his heart dilate with impulsive pity and admiration beyond words 
to express. 

When, sometime later, Lady Jiberene came up and claimed 
Inm for attendance upon a terrific lady in brown chiffon and pink 
roses, he went as a person rises out of a dream to return to 
hard duty. As for Mary, she too was borne off in her hostess 
wing to the presence of Mrs. Courtman, who was queening 
matters eagerly in another of the big rooms, or salons. She 

greeted Mary with forced graciousness. Her eyes, handsome 

though they were, looked burnt with inward excitement and 

feverishness, and her every movement was hurried and flutter- 
ing; so reducing her rich and beautiful attire to an odd effect of 
excited gaudiness, instead of exquisite repose. She took Marv 
almost abruptly by the arm, saying, 'T want to speak to you. Do 
get away from this crew for a minute. I asked Lady Jiberene 
to tell me when you came. Aren’t these people too hideous? Did 
you ever sec anything so frightful? d hat frump over there with 
her wig coming off — she's just married a boy who fagged fo** 
her sons at Eton ! She’s showing him round London now. I 

believe she’s taking him to the Zoo and Madame Tussaud’s — 
what things people will do, won’t they? That’s a pretty frock. 
How well you look after all these years! You improve with 
time, I declare. Now, here we are at a nice quiet spot if we 
can only hold on to it. I do so want a talk.” 

Mary, who had been struggling after her through the crush 
in sheer bewilderment, now sat down by her side at a small table 
in the supper-room and prepared to listen !o yards more of such 
talk. But, after offering her some slight refreshment, Florence 
suddenly subsided into short, pertinent questions. 

‘‘I luivcn’t forgotten our old friendsh’p — have you?” 

“No, indeed. 

“I heard — I heard you were not left too -.veil off? May 1 
ask such a thing?” 

"It is obvious in itself,” said Mary quialy, and suddenly on 
her guard against other questions. “I should not otherwise work 
at that club as I do.” 

“Oh, don’t be offended. I only wanted to lead up to — to ” 

“Yes ?” 

"To a suggestion 1 wanted to make. Fm well off. as you know. 
If you’d rather not work — not work at tli.'it liorrid club (oh 


66 


A SHEPHERD OF KEKSINGTOK 


aren’t they a set of dowds?) would you let an old — one who has 
known you for years, make you a little contribution to your 
yearly income? Now don’t ” 

For Mary had half risen. She had flushed and then turnea 
suddenly pale. 

“You are more than good,” she answered almost inaudibly. 
and her eyes filled with tears ; “but I could not accept ” 

“Yes, yes, you easily could,” urged Florence eagerly, her eyes 
not meeting her friends, however. “It could be put into your 
bank. Such a little. If you would only let me! Think it over. 
There, say no more now. For the old days’ sake, you know. 
Oh, don’t be cross, I’ll write. So long as you’re not offended ' 

Mary put out her hand and laid it over Mrs. Courtman’s, her 
heart too full to find voice. Strangely enough the hand was 
jerked rapidly away from hers. The action struck a chill. 

“There,” said Florence rising quickly, “let us say no more 
now. No, no thanks. Please!” 

She hurried Mrs. Fresne away back to the crowded rooms 
again and easily lost her. But Mary, bewildered and touched by 
such utter generosity remained for some time alone in a crowded 
corner, thinking over this strange oft'er. Then, seeing the tim'*, 
she went and made her adieux to her hostess. Cartyn was wait- 
ing in the hall when she came out of the cloak-room transformed 
once more into her old self in plain hat and check cape. 

“We go the same way,” he said. “May I take 3^ou back?” 

She could not refuse, and together they got into the home- 
ward bearing hansom. Mary’s eyes were shining. She was full 
of Mrs. Courtman’s offer, and he, noticing that she seemed ab- 
stracted, at last said, “Well, did you meet any good fairies to- 
night?” 

“One,” she said, turning on his a brilliant look ; “an old, old 
friend — Mrs. Courtman. Someone I knew well in the old day*: 
at Bahore.” 

Then, impulsively and noting his keen face bent to hers, and 
knowing his expressed interest in her affairs, she told him 
briefly what Florence had said. His face became suddenly grave 
he started. “She has offered you money?” he said quite sharply. 

“She put it nicer than that,” pouted Mary. “She called it a 
gift for the old days’ acquaintance sake — she ” 

Cartyn leaned over her in the cab, placing his hand earnestly 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


67 


on both of hers in a tight grip, his face suddenly set and white 
in the dicker of the cab-lamp. 

“For God’s sake, do not take it,” she said. 

She let her hand stay under his in entire astonishment. She 
glanced at him quite squarely, forgetting even the thrill of their 
personal nearness in her real surprise. She said, because he 
still held the hand and looked at her so — 

“But I don’t understand.” 

“No, indeed,” he persisted with eagerness; “how could you? 
Only let me beg of you in the name of all you hold sacred, not 
to accept this woman’s money. I have a reason." She softly 
moved her hand away from his grasp. 

“But this is very strange of you, Mr. Cartyn i What am i 
to make of it? Mrs. Courtman is an old friend — I knew her 
years ago. I did not say I should accept her offer. 1 simply 
told you she had made it. I was so overjoyed at — at so much 
friendship from one who knew me in the past.” Her voice 
wavered a little. 

Again he put out his hand and touched her arm, 

“1 beg you,” he said, “to trust me. I implore you to believe 
that I am not interfering through any idle prejudice or fancy 
of my own, but in your most sacred interests.” 

“Yes, yes,” said Mary impatiently; “but this is not called for 
at all ! 1 should think very long and seriously before letting 

my friend do anything for me. I suppose I have a little pride 


“Good heavens, yes. That is not what I meant.” 

“I can go on as I have done — better perhaps, rather than be 
beholden to any one. even a friend. Still. Mr. Cartyn. I do not 
understand your tone. You seem to have some strange dislike 
to Mrs. Courtman — do you know her, then?” 

“Yes,” said Cartyn slowly. “I know her, since you ask.” 

“Then, even knowing her yourself, you must not. please, use 
that disparaging tone to me. She is my old friend. We were 
together at Bahore. She knew my husband.” 

Cartyn bowed. “I will say no more — 1 ron say no more,” 
he an.swered. “Only let me beg of you to think kindly of nyv 
motives in speaking as T did — as kindly as you can. If you 
knew,” he was going to say, “what 1 know.” but checked him- 


68 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


self. “If you saw things as I see them you would understand 
You would know me for a friend.” 

Mary turned her eyes, whimsical with bewilderment, on to his 
earnest face and studied him a moment. 

“I should always believe in your kindness and friendship,” she 
said; “but really I fail to understand you just now. So shall 
we change the subject? We are nearly home. There is Lodei 
Street — I am afraid your rabbit has gone to bed. See, his shop 
is shut up. He is much more law-abiding and respectable than 
we are !” 

She laughed again in her old way as she alighted quickly 
from the cab-step and bade him “Good-night,” and she would 
not have the cab drive up to her door, but stopped at the end of 
the street, for motives not unlike those of Mrs. Gilpin who 
would not have the “chaise and pair” nearer than two doors 
away. 

Cartyn tried to laugh with her, but his face was grave and 
serious as he walked the short distance home. He dismissed 
the cab and took his course gladly, feeling the still night air 
cooling on his brow, and yielding like any other man to the 
necessity for at least physical action in the face of this new 
danger. 

Because it was a new danger. If this cruelly treated woman 
were persuaded to take money, on whatever excuse, Mrs. Court- 
man would then consider herself free of all responsibility in the 
matter, and his own hold over her would be gone. And who 
could tell Mary that the money would be the price of her own 
honour? No one, since only he knew it to be that, and he had 
no right to speak. 

He came to the vicarage door ; he glanced at it with new eyes 
before putting in his key. 

“A door copied from one of the doors at Glastonbury !” he 
said. All those iron nails ought to make one feel quite satisfied 
to shut out ‘the world’ and its concerns. But somehow, to-night, 
I can’t. It used to be quite easy to go in at a Norman arch and 
completely forget other people’s human bothers. I remember 
when I first saw that door and knew it to be my own, I felt 
that my parochial outfit was pretty complete! To-night it is 
positively irritating. I suppose T’s the empty symbolism.’ ’ 

He stood a moment on the step, and glanced back at the house.: 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


69 


and streets and chimneys looming through the clear silver night : 
the vast unknown place he called his parish. Under those roofs 
and chimneys lay a million difificulties, yet a million possibilities ; 
and he was answerable for his part — his larger priestly part — 
for hundreds of these, he said. Until lately he had neve*- 
dreamed that he was anything but perfectly fitted to the task. It 
had all been a very simple matter — an excellent career at the Uni- 
versity, with honours, followed by a brief curacy and then those 
ten years of eminently successful slum work. In a sense it had 
all been ready-made for him, and had undoubtedly prospered 
under his serene self-confidence and marked powers of organi- 
sation. Of course, souls were not complicated. You just col- 
lected them and applied the Church’s infallible rules and thete 
you were. It had all been simple enough, especially in the 
slums where they counted Communicants in good round num- 
bers, and whipped up the people in vigorous style. They had 
always said, in the East End, that they “hummed.” A time 
was when he would have tossed aside this problem as lightly as 
Brother Anselm had done, only on different lines. Not so very 
long ago he had indignantly asked himself what ordinary man 
could comprehend such women as Florence Courtman. Now he 
had begun to see that the true shepherd had no right to be ah 
ordinary man at all. 

He felt pettishly angry at the set of circumstances that had 
shaken his clerical officialism as a terrier shakes a rat. His 
pride in his pastoral powers was rudely beaten. 

What, so far, had he done that had helped anybody in thife 
affair? Utterly nothing. He said, as he went up to bed past 
the Peruginos, and the jerry-Gothic staircase windows — 

"A London parson is like a doctor who knows his cures — and 
doesn’t know his patients !” 



CHAPTER VII 


The next day, Sunday, made any further action for the moment 
impossible. He got a glimpse of Florence’s hat and face in the 
crowded service. She was waving a fan to and fro, imagining 
it to be hot. When she did this, she rattled like castenets or fire- 
irons. She might have been dressed in chain armour. She 
wafted a strong odour of Lavendar water at the same time. 
She hated it, but she wore it always in church as being especially 
used by religious ladies, it made her feel good. Her eyes bist- 
red and pensive, looked at anything but her book. She contin- 
Aially fidgeted, and shot little reports caused by silks suddenly 
jerked, and cracking gloves dragged fussily ofif and on, and vio- 
lent and sweeping sighs on to the otherwise calm air. He was 
too far away to hear it over the choir’s performances, but he 
knew the little fusilade was going on as well as the pew neign- 
bours did. 

Whde one of his curates intoned the service in a perfectly 
unintelligible sing-song, highly pitched and through a very thin 
nose, the vicar glanced at the waving feathers and flowers that, 
seen from his elevated seat, represented his congregation, and 
made a pathetic resolve to try to see if he couldn’t understand 
these people more. 

They were not, never could be, Ursula Limpoles. Brother 
Anselm would have, indeed, raved at them as Savonarola raved 
at the ladies of Florence. But the vicar, sitting away in the 
shadowy sedilia, had to-day a first faint suspicion that that 
would have been too crude, even ridiculous. He said to himself 
that it was very easy, after all,, to look at a lot of women in 
pretty hats and condemn them sweepingly as frivolous. They 
would even be rather flattered and self-congratulatory over it. 

You could have stood up and entertained them, certainly, with 
an account of the more lurid sins of society, but probably you 
would not have before you one single person who committed 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


71 


those. It would be like telling an eczema patient how to cure 
cancer. 

“Well,” he said to himself, "I’ll begin now' to try and under 
stand these people — that sort of woman — better. The greatest 
saints" he glanced over at an Augustine in magenta in one of 
the windows, with enormous royal blue feet, “knew the world. 
Were quite worldly to do good. I must learn that.” 

So the next morning he was up early. 

He had an early service, and some accounts to look into be- 
fore the 9.30 vicarage meeting, when his curates, missioners, dea- 
coness, nurse, and other church officers came for the weekly 
business, minute, urgent, necessary, of a briskly worked parish. 
The worldly war began unpicturesquely. The infinite troubles 
of the vexed question of schools, the infinite littlenesses of a 
state officialism determined on persecution, even if it was only 
taking a gentle and worried headmaster to task for the over- 
lavish use of slate-pencils, all had to be put before the vicar, 
and arbitrated and settled with what patience he might muster. 

And the crowd of his colleagues and assistants fiocked in one 
by one to the large, bare, chilly dining-room, where, for all the 
handsome oak furniture copied from a famous abbey, the dark 
crimson rep curtains were dingy, and the fire — newly lighted 
by a cross and tardy housemaid — anything but genial. The 
church-window shaped pictures on the walls were good copies 
of famous Fra Angelicos, but that in no way obliterated the fact 
that the damp sticks in the grate, and the rarely used chimney 
was producing a thin, nauseous smoke that filled the room, and 
clung to anything shiny that it came across, preferably the vei- 
ger’s bowsprit-shaped nose. Every one was anxious to get his 
particular work done first. Tolley, the verger, gave voice to real- 
ly trying home-truths about the clerk, over a question of wed- 
ding fees, said to have been whisked from their original destina- 
tion. The clerk, unmoved and very patronising, was inclined 
to place too much pitying stress on Tolley’s short-sightedness 
and venerable age, and occasionally gave point to his remarks 
by .lightly tapping his own forehead, a most dangerously per 
sonal point, likely to rouse ill-feeling. A large, blundering Manx-' 
man curate, not unlike a big retriever shaking itself after a 
plunge in muddy water, bellowed forth somewhat crude reasons 
for a notorious disturbance in the church lads’ brigade,, and 


A StIEPHERD OF KENSINGTOxX 


tossed these reasons after the fashion of mud-splashes at the 
head of a clean and superior young ecclesiastic with very promi- 
nent finger-tips, turned out most beautifully complete from Keble, 
with an entire and perfect theory of theology and human nature- 
capable of being contained on his own thumb-nail. 

Between these the vicar must arbitrate. Ihe Manx reformer, 
in a brogue, sometimes a deep bass and sometimes a hysterical 
squeak, had volumes to say. The Keble ecclesiastic had more 
to look, and the exact potency of well-posed finger-tips and a 
superior smile in a dispute of this volcanic nature began to 
interest Cartyn as a study in the ethics of voiceless argumenr, 
and made him lose a little interest in the exact cause of all the 
scene, till a shake of his conscience brought him back to the 
fact that this was, in spite of its laughable combatants, a serious 
matter involving the welfare of his boys, a thing he must try to 
remember. 

Other matters claimed him — the nurse’s report, with several 
requests from the poor parishioners, nothing if not cool, i. c 
a poor widow woman (never at church, and a notorious gossip 
and idler), demanded an entirely new set of teeth, for the 
church to gladly provide. 

“What has she done v/ith her own? — talked them away?” said 
Cartyn. 

The nurse smiled deprecatingly. She did but repeat the re- 
quests. She had her own opinion as to their impudence. 

“She says, ‘Why should she keep the Church of England if 
we don’t give her the teeth?’” saM this demurely bonneted lady. 

“Tell her when she keeps the Church of England she shall 
have her teeth," he answered, then laughed, and in a lower voice 
made some inquiries as to the real merits of the case. All the 
nurse could say, however, was that the woman certainly had 
none and her health was bad. 

The deaconess now raised a modest head. “May 1 speak, sir? 
Is it Mrs. Tripp? I, too, have heard about the teeth. She says 
if she had them she could and would turn over a new leaf and 
begin to get her own living, instead of depending on her poor 
children. I could keep her to that promise. It would be a 
charity to the children.” 

“What does she propose to do, then, if she gets these teeth?" 
said the vicar. “How will she earn her living?” 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


73 


“She’s going to get married !” put in the verger, with a sharp 
raucous snap, as though closing the conversation. 

Even the vestry meeting laughed. The verger glanced round 
the ring and added — 

"Nails is enough. Don’t give her no teeth. Lots of ’em gets 
to the Police Court on nails alone. Think of the pore man!” 

The verger was shut up, and a consultation ’with the deaconess 
resulted in a letter for the Dental Hospital being provided for 
the toothless lady who not only kept the Church of England, but 
could induce a second husband to keep her. A long discuss'on 
over the petty persecutions of the school officers followed thi.s 
debate, and the whole morning was gone before Cartyn found 
himself free to think out any definite plan as regarded his own 
affairs. 

Even when he did get free of his regiment of workers, and 
put on his hat to go to a C. O. S. meeting that he could just 
manage to work in, he found himself waylaid and followed br 
Mr. Holden, the churchwarden, whose wife had followed Mary 
to the vestry. 

There was a dulness, a calm, insensitive weight about Mr. 
Holden that made him difficult to shake olT at any time, and 
Cartyn resigned himself to seven minutes of his companionship 
as they made their way along the long, dark streets to the C. O. 
S. offices. The churchwarden’s grey, rather curly hair grew 
like a monk’s tonsure in a ring above a fat neck, arranged in 
a roll, and his walk was a rolling swing; he was a retired Civil 
servant, who had married a rich wife, and who, being himself 
kept in order at home, was sometimes sent forth to keep the 
church in order. This he did perfunctorily — with qualms, but 
with the best intentions. 

"Off to another meeting?" he said, with lumbering playful- 
ness. 

“Yes — C. O. S.,” said Cartyn. “I shall just have time.” He 
glanced at his watch. 

"Whatever time do you lunch ?” 

“Oh, it’s a movable affair. To-day not till two o’clock. 1 
expect.’’ 

“Ah — ah !” said Mr. Holden, shaking a fat forefinger remon- 
stratingiy “Shocking for the digestion, vicar, shocking! You’re 


74 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTOX 


too young to have one, you’ll say. But my advice is, get a wife 
before you do, eh?” 

“A wife — or teeth?" said Cartyn. 

“Ha, ha ! Oh, I mean a nice girl to see to your home com 
forts, and look after things — see you come in to meals at 
proper hours, and all that.” 

Mr. Holden was himself to rigidly “seen" to come in to 
meals at proper hours, that, of course, he spoke with much 
feeling; there may also have been other feelings behind his. 
advice, as he had two daughters both anxious to occupy the 
vicarage themselves. 

Cartyn only laughed shortly, so Mr. Holden rambled on. 

“You’re a public man — they’ll look for you to marr}'- one day. 
and to marry a woman likely to be popular in the parish, a leader, 
and all that. That’s a parson’s duty, so I’ve heard. Well, well, 
there are plenty to be found.” 

"Duties?” said Cartyn. 

“No, no, clever, managin women,” said Mr. Holden airily. 
“Women who keep things going, give teas, lead the other 
ladies, and all that ! Proper, serious sort of women ; not too 
good-looking, nor too dressy, but just sensible, with everything 
to everybody in the place, so that nothing can be said, you know. 
I knew a man, canon he was of one of our big Colonial cathe- 
drals, who ruined himself and his church because he married a 
woman about whom people said things'. Yours is a fine parish 
— you ought to give us a good sensible lady at the head of 
things !” 

He laughed weakly, as people do who try to cover an imper- 
tinence. Cartyn felt annoyed, but only said — 

“Really, she sounds very bad for the digestion. She would 
frighten me into a health craze. Pray don’t expect her yet 
awhile, Mr. Holden,” 

He managed to get rid of his fussy adviser as well as he 
could. Even in a mission to “the world,” he was not obliged 
to include bores — at any rate, advising bores. Even the pre- 
cept of “suffering fools gladly” does not go so far as to include 
advising ones. They are surely beyond the pale of even super- 
human endurance? 

Cartyn made straight for Darnley Gardens. He was deter- 
mined to get at Florence, preferably when she was unprepared, 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


75 


;incl settle something. Pie was also — rather pathetically — de- 
termined not to be shocked at anything. In fact, to meet “the 
world” and the spirit thereof with the broadest spirit. He 
was prepared to smile at anjlhing. He said he was turning 
over a new leaf. He would meet these people on their own 
ground. 

So he put on what he thought was a winning smile, when he 
entered Florence’s untidy room, and cleared his throat uneasily. 

She got up to greet him a little tousled and confused, with 
•something like a blush on her heavy face. She rose like Aphro- 
dite from a perfect sea of cushions, and terrifically ugly little 
dogs, creatures entirely kicking in the faintest trace of canine 
candour or dignity. They had watery eyes and snub noses. 
A faint Zoolike odour permeated insistently through the heavy 
Persian perfume with which, apparently, most of the furniture 
was saturated. A certain mad confusion of all the room's dec- 
orative gew-gaws — Florence would have called it ‘'abandon ” — 
gave away her age far more than her eagerly frivolous manner 
did. She had been a woman celebrated for being “fascinating” 
fifteen years ago, and she still kept, in her furniture, to dated 
insignia. 

P)Ut the vicar thought, “Ah, how modern !’’ or thought he 
ought to be thinking so. He turned away from the repulsive 
dogs, and glanced round vaguely for something to shock him 
.•It which he was not going to be shocked. Florence soon came 
to the rescue. 

“So sweet of you to come ! Do look at Du Du." she cried, 

holding up one of the ratty things apparently by its red neck- 

ribbon. “Isn’t he naughty? He eats four cutlets a day! 

At least he did yesterday. Now he is ill." 

Cartyn glanced at the appalling animal. He tried hard not 
to be shocked, and to forget that two poor families in his 

parish had been found that morning with no food in the house, 
having had none at all yesterday. “The world" had begun 
with a conundrum. 

“You know, Mrs. Courtman,” he began, t.aking no notice of 
the dog. ‘Ton and I have never had a really friendly talk, have 
we, about all — all you told me? If I have been too hard I have 
come to apologise.” 

She dropped the dog and glanced at him rather furtively. 


76 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON" 


playing with a pink coral necklace that she wore over her 
dress collar. 

“Why, now you’re really nice,’’ she said. "You are rather 
cross sometimes, you know. I think you're particularly down- 
on me, I don’t know why.” 

She sighed and thinned her voice into a sort of plaintive 
baby whine, at one time thought very fascinating, even when 
used by a large woman. 

“Well, well, you must forgive me. One does not always 
understand ” 

“No, no. Of course not. Bachelors don’t.” He started. 

“A man in my profession has to learn pretty gradually how 
to help others — help women,” he added. 

“He never learns, does he? — till one thing." 

“What is that?” 

“Till he loves.” 

She said it very softly, still in the minute voice. She had sunk 
back to her cushions, and her ringed hand, a very pretty one, 
rested on one of the lap-dogs’ heads. She was watching him 
very closely. 

He laughed uneasily. This was still not what he had quite 
expected. 

“I hope our ministry does not rest on so — so slight a thing 
as that !” he said. 

“Slight? Ah, men will do much for love. Some men will. 
You would. I could see that in your face when I hrst saw 
you.” 

“But our ministry ” 

“Ministry? Oh, I thought you spoke of helping women." 

“So I do. We try.” 

“Oh, yes, with frumps. The question is do they matter to 
the world? I mean the large world — London, and all that?" 

“It’s just London and all that I want to try and understand 
and help. If you include yourself in ‘all that,’ give me credit for 
thinking that you matter, and forget the “frumps.’ ” 

He had a way, supremely guileless, of looking very straightly 
into the eyes of any one to whom he was speaking, with his 
head a little on one side. It is a tradition of Newman, that 
.Archbishop Temple complained of in one of his Oxford letters 
as being badly copied by perfectly sincere and often uncon- 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


77 


scions men. Cartyn was one of these. But Florence dropped 
her handsome eyes, and smiled coqnettishly at it. She did not 
know Newman. 

“Don’t look at me so piercingly !“ she cried in mock alarm. 
“It is naughty of yon. I know I'm not all I ought to be. But 
I haven’t forgotten what yon said about Mrs. Fresne, and I’m 
going to put all that matter right — indeed 1 am — for your sake, 
Mr. Cartyn.” 

“For my sake? Oh no. But, really, are yon — are you 
going to make it right?" 

He looked snddenl}'-, fearfully eager — too eager. 

“Yes. To please you.” 

“Well?” 

“It is settled.” 

“You will restore her good name?” 

“Well, the same thing." 

“What — you will see the trustees ?” 

“No, no; not quite that. But to please you I have offered, 
have arranged to give her an annity in the name of our old 
acquaintance. That will settle it — put it all right.’’ 

His eager face fell. She say it at once. “You aren’t pleased, 
after all.” 

He did not look so. His hopes had risen at her words, but 
he now saw that he had got no further in the matter after all. 

“Can’t you just see,” he said gently, if eagerly, remembering 
that he was trying to be patient with ”the world,” “that an 
annuity does not clear her good name? From you it is 

surely something very like the price of it?” 

“Well, but who knows? Nobody. All those people in 

Bahore have forgotten ages ago. That old tabby of a Lady 
Jiberene came fussing to me before her party trying to ask 
a few questions; but I said only the nicest things. I told 
how she went to the vicereine’s ball, and even said I wanted to 

meet her again, and got her invited. And so I did, to suggest 

this annuity to her. She herself was pleased, anyhow !” 

“Yes, yes. But, don’t you see she doesn’t know who harmed 
her? That makes all the difference.” 

“Pshaw ! Not it. Women don’t split points like that over 
getting money nowadays. Things are too expensive. People 
can’t afford to be so heroic. Besides, there isn’t time. And 


78 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


there isn't time. And what does an old scandal matter to a 
pretty woman in London, anyhow?" 

Cartyn suddenly forgot to be nice to “the world." His 
e3'-es blazed, though he steadied his voice and said after a pause — 

"I believe her to be — though this is quite beside the point — 
a woman whose honour is her first consideration." 

“Oh dear, yes—very solemn, and all that. Still, Mr, Cartyn, 
with a nice little income and her good looks — she really looked 
like her old self that night at Lady Jiberene’s — weren’t you 
there? Yes, with a little settlement and her looks, I was 
saying, she might easily marry some quite nice man who 
wouldn’t bother, then all would be right. I can imagine her 
picking up with some comfortable doctor in a small country 
town, or " 

“How dare you?” flashed Cart\m, his voice thrilling with in- 
dignation. “I say how dare 3^011 — you, who have ruined a 
woman, pack her off, dismiss her, as spoiled goods, as rubbish, 
to such a fate !” 

Of all the things she had said and done, of all of wnich hj 
guessed her capable, nothing had infuriated Cartyn like this 
suggestion that Mary should be married out of pity, for a sm 
she had not committed ! He was so far human as to feel 
madly angry with that country doctor who should dare patron- 
isingly to marry Mary, even though he was but a creature of 
Florence’s inconsequent imagination. As for Florence, she 
gazed at him in entire astonishment. 

“I was only suggesting something quite— quite nice for her," 
she said. “And aren’t you rather hard on country doctors ? 
Well, say something else then. I’m sure I don’t care. S*") 
long as she gets comfortably settled and off my conscience, she 
can marry clerks or dukes or what she pleases. It is of no 
consequence to me. Do 1 care about anything but settling this 
wretched feeling of regret for the past ? I’ve told you over 
and over again I’m sorry now that T did it. I’m really a good 
woman by nature, though you might not think it. You clergy 
men are such sticklers at trifles. However, we need not dis- 
cuss it further, Mr. Cartyn. I have spoken to her about thr^ 
annuity — pension — whatever you like to call it, and the affair 
will shortly be, is practically settled." 

“I’m sorry to contradict you,” said Cartyn, in a voice quiet 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


79 


and tense with feeling; “but, if I know anything about it, the 
matter is not settled.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I shall do all in my power to prevent i\Irs. Fresne accepting 
a penny from you.” 

Morence rose from amongst her dogs and slipped her daintily 
clad self on a chintz ottoman, carefully Huffing up the cushions 
around herself, as though their artistic and luxurious arrange- 
ment supremely mattered. There was, however, a dangerous 
look in her eyes. 

“Will you explain,” she said coldly, while she examined the. 
laces on her morning-gown sleeve with apparent attention, “why 
you propose doing such an extraordinary thing? And how you 
have any authority over Mrs. Fresne? You said you hardly 
knew her.” 

“I have not known her long; but lately 1 have seen more of 
her. 1 have seen enough of her plucky life to know that of 
her own accord she would probably refuse pecuniary assistance 
from any one. But that is not the point — the point is that you 
cannot offer a woman the price of her own good name.” 

“She would never know it!” Hashed Florence angrily; “unless 
yon ” she paused, and her eyes uttered a base suspicion. 

“Once and for all, Mrs. Courtman, you must understand that 
1 cannot speak of it. When 1 tell you that my honour as a 
priest is involved in my silence on every word that you hav" 
confided in me, perhaps you will trust me? In doing my best 
to persuade Mrs. Fresne not to accept this money I could rely 
on her trust in me as a friend. I could warn her of nothing. ' 

“Then you and she are friends?” 

“I suppose so — yes.” Cartyii’s voice was gravely reserved. ; 

“Ah, then, I can see now the reason for 3 ^our extreme interest 
in her affairs.” 

“We will not discuss my motives. I hope they are sincere 
I can only say that if Mrs. Fresne’s lonely and friendless con- 
dition appealed to your own sympathy and better feelings, it has 
done the same to mine. Shall we not say, IMrs. Courtman, that 
both you and I are interested in her, and are trying to do our 
best for her?” 

“And yet you won’t let me do my best !” said Florence petu- 
lently. 


8 () 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


“It is not your best. It is your poorest makeshift,” said he 
quietly. “You can do better than that!” 

Florence leant back on her cushions and looked up at him. 

"If it satisfies me, that is enough,” she said haughtily. “I 
came to the Church for advice. It demands too much froni 
me. I shall therefore go by my own conscience, and make the 
reparation I think sufficient. To me that annuity is sufficient. 
All I wanted was to get rid of that — that uncomfortable feeling 
of having done a mean and horrible trick ; yes, I admit it fully — 
horrible trick. This will settle matters. I believe my luck 
will turn when this is accomplished.” 

Cartyn turned to go. 

“Very well,” he said. “Only I warn you that I have reason 
to believe that she will refuse.” 

“How.” 

“Because she herself told me of your offer. She seemed 
doubtful then about accepting. I admit I warned her.” 

“When was that?” 

“After Lady Jiberene’s party. I brought her home.” 

“Then,” said Florence, her voice thick with passion, “since 
she has alienated even your interest, you, a stranger — though 
a kind one — from me, and taken it to herself she can deliver 
herself from her trouble! She shall have nothing at my 
hands. She took Maurice Fresne's friendship from me. Now 
she has taken yours ! Am I doomed to be met and outdone 
hy her at every turn? You, whose kind face and sermons 
helped me to the first attempt at seriousness I have ever made — 
for you to turn against me, through her ! It is more than I 
can tear! She deserves her fate! I will not raise a finger 
to alter it !” 

Cartyn turned back from the door and went over to her. 
holding out his hand. 

“You are utterly mistaken,” he said earnestly. “Mrs. Court- 
man, I shall never — never lose my most intense interest in your 
sad trouble and all that concerns you. Can you suppose that 
pity for your friend can in the least alter my friendship for. 
and interest in, you?” 

She took his hand, but perfunctorily. 

“There are degrees,” she said, “of friendship.” 

“A pastor should have no degrees — in prayer,” he said. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


8i 

"Oh — prayer.” Mrs. Courttnan tossed her head. “I sup- 

Vo.se you will say you pray for me?” 

”1 do, indeed.” 

“But you think of her?” 

“Praying and thinking are one.” 

“No, really. Praying is thinking o? people at given times. 
But thinking, without prayer, goes on all the day through.” 

“I hope my ‘given times’ are more help to you than vague 
ihinking.’’ 

“Still you evade the question, 1 note! Oh. yes, it's plain 
enough. You, too, have been struck by her face.” She laughed 
rvgrily. “You, too, see it all from her point of view ! How 
like a man!” i 

“You have no right to say that,’’ he said, his face suddenly 
scarlet. 

“Right or not, it is true. I am a candid person, as you 
have probably found out, and I tell you,” she glanced over at 
him mockingly, her petulant head throv/n back, “you are in love 
with her !” 

He thought he had never heard a woman’s laugh sound quite 
so hideous. The whole history of her petty selfishnesses 
snarled in its thin, high note. Even some tricks of fascination 
show the skeleton underneath. This one did. 

He turned away, bewildered and furious with himself and 
her. St. Augustine surely had not to deal wi'h such perver- 
sities as this. But now, the droop of his incurably boyish head, 
his petulant — “Well, good-bye,” said over his shoulder were too 
much for her. She got up from her cushions and went towards 
h.im softly. Her dress rustled delicately. Her eyes were 
shining. 

“Mr. Cart 3 'n, a moment!” she said. 

He turned. She stood with her eyes cast down. She looked 
rosy, full-blown, coquettish, strange. What did it mean? 

"Yes,” he said, with one glance and turning liis eyes away, 
instinctively, in disgust at something vaguely repellent. 

“Can’t you sec that I am — jealous!” Again the ogle. He 
did not answer. ,^‘It’s horrid to feel jealous about a man.” 

“Jealous of whom?” he said sharply. 

“Of her — that you like her better than me. 

Mary Fresne,” she sighed. 


1 am jealous of 


82 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


“You always were, I think,” he saidly coldly. “That was 
the first cause of the trouble.” 

“Yes, it was. You are right. You always are. Don’t be 
angry with me. I only said that at random. Perhaps you 
don’t — don’t care for her — in that way.” 

“Really,” he cried impatiently, pushing away from her, “we 
cannot discuss an acquaintance in this way. You forget your- 
self.” 

“Yes, I do — for you!” she answered, impulsively and fervently. 
“Listen. Do you ask me to go to the trustees, confess the 
whole thing? All right. It isn’t impossible. I’d do it if — 
won’t you look at me even for friendship’s sake? — if I thought 
you — ^you — could care for me. I care for 3^011. I’ll be honest. 
Don’t you — can’t you ” 

He shook the dust off his feet. 

That night a note reached him from her. It was the curtest 
thing she had ever written, or rather splashed, and it was not 
scented for once. It stated that he need not think of her ot- 
her affairs again, ever. Their friendship was over. She had 
started that afternoon for the Continent. She considered their 
mutual interests at an end. 


CHAPTER VIIl 


'Hhe wretched woman takes me for an ordinary man!” was hi3 
nirioiis cry. “It is intolerable.” 

For the first moment the insult drowned all coherent thought. 
To be taken for a mere man of the world, for a flirt, for a 
possible lover! After all his successful years as a roman 
tically imagined celibate, at least, if not a vowed one. After 
all his triumphs as a churchman ! After all the thousand little 
rigidities that covered his naturally boyish manners with a 
growth of spiky mannerisms — things so carefully learnt, so pa- 
tiently practised in the dear desire for orthodoxy! To be taken 
for this, by such a woman ! What had he left undone in his 
protecting pose that his attitude of priest to penitent should be 
so wickedly misinterpreted? He asked himself where the fault 
lay. Flad he not kept almost strictly to that chant voice in 
Florence’s worldly presence ? He said he had, so far as he 
was aware. Had he not been stern? He was certain he had. 
He would not pet the dogs. The woman was mad. He forgot 
Mary Fresne in his furiously hurt vanity. He forgot what 
this new move meant for her, or if he remembered it the realisa- 
tion was only secondary. 

'I'o be taken for an ordinary man. To be thought on a par 
with Florence’s other men friends ! It could not be borne. 

In his wrath he shut himself up away from all feminine so- 
ciety, or the sound thereof, and sulked. He would have called 
it meditating. If he could not be St. Augustine in magenta in a 
meretricious stained-glass window he wouldn’t play. That is 
not exactly as he put it to himself, but it is pretty well what 
the sum of his meditations, at this stage, amounted to. 

The chilly Peruginos and the hall door were now a consola- 
tion. Once within their range one could indignantly try to for- 
get, in one’s own surrounding eccelesiasticism, the irreverent 
world outside. He said he forgot it. But he remained furious 
with the decamped Florence, and incidentally with all women. 


«4 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


He washed his hands of them he said. He made one resolve. 
After this he would avoid these creatures of the world as hope- 
less, as Brother Anselm did. He would deal only with thos2 
decent and orderly women of the Miss Ursula Limpolc school, 
who wore unbecoming hats. He had never seen the invincible 
Miss Limpole, but he was quite sure he could imagine her hats. 
Florence and her awful confession of preference for him, of 
jealousy on his account, would be an everlasting warning. In 
such a mood he let a whole week go by. But one day one of 
his curates asked him to look in at the meeting of the Crafts 
Guild when he could spare an evening. It sounded inocuou.-' 
enough, and he went. The hats of those ladies were beyond 
suspicion. 

It was not until he reached the large, bare-looking parish 
room, lighted with pitiless incandescent light, and full of busy 
ladies, and one or two men, all at work upon articles of church 
decoration, and saw a familiarly fair head bending over some 
sewing, that he realised that Mary Fresne belonged to this 
affair. 

He was so angry at Florence’s suggestions that even the sight 
of Mary in a sense annoyed him. He would not glance her way. 
But “the world” must be encountered. And with a setting of 
his lips, he plunged into the vortex. The Holden family was 
well to the fore. Mrs. Holden, the president of the guild, who 
had a thin red face, and eyes set almost perpendicularly, like a 
hen’s, was by way of being appallingly artistic. She called it 
“clutchah.” 

It was often rather trying to her friends. For instance, it 
caused her to take violent possession of certain persons or 
phases of art, and to refuse to permit anybody else to know any- 
thing about them. She said — 

“Ah, Giotto! — an exponent I have rather a passion for. His 
colouring — too desolating!” 

After this pronouncement, no other person, especially no other 
woman, might admire Giotto, or even know anything about 
him. He had become Mrs. Holden’s intellectual property en- 
tirely. Henceforth she ran him. He was hers only. 

She was therefore suitable as the president of the Crafts Guild 
and exercised a tyrannical sway over its productions, in a voice 
almost strangled with “cultchah.” She had claw-like hands and 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


85 


a Inin smile in which her eyes took no part. She never wore a 
real colour, but only the neutral poor relations of colours. She 
adored hand embroidery and prehistoric looking jewellery. 

But if she regarded Giotto as her property she regarded the 
vicar as something more, as her inali^^nable right. Her three 
unmarried daughters made him almost necessary to her very 
existence. On his account she hated all the parish. 

She greeted him enthusiastically. 

“Oh, but how delightful ! To have \’ou come in and look at 
our little efforts aftah the beautiful! How nice of you, Mr. Car- 
tyn. Do come over and see this wood-carving of Miss Bryant’s — 
so chaste. And may 1 show you the small sketch dear Ethel is 
making? Though ‘mine own,' Mr. Cartyn, I must confess to 
rathah an enthusiasm for it !’’ 

She led him to a very stiff daub done by one of her daughters. 
She alwa 3 ^s spoke of “rathah a passion,’’ or “rathah a mania.’’ 
She v/as quite capable of saying “rathah an obsession.” 

The vicar glanced at these treasures a little abstractedly. He 
wished Mrs. Fresne were not in ihe room. Again and again 
the consciousness of her presence bewildeied and bothered him, 
and distracted him into vague answers to Mrs. Holden’s high 
art talk. It seemed that she too must know of Florence's violent 
charge that he loved her, and in a kind of boyish indignation he 
would not glance over in her direction. It made him angry with 
even her. 

Mrs. Holden went on — 

“This is a de-ah thing, b}^ my daughter Dominica.” 

“Er — yes, yes. You must be very proud of it.” 

“Oh — ah, we enjoy it.” 

“And — er — this ironwork? Isn’t it considered good?” 

The thin smile wrinkled. 

“We endure it,” she replied coldly. She pronounced it “en- 
juah.” The ironwork was not by a Miss Holden. 

As he went about the room from one to another, trying to 
keep up as fiercely Augustinian manner as he could, he became 
aware, without seeming actually to look in her direction, after 
the Jesuitical habit of the born cleric, that Mary was being a 
little neglected in this chaste assembly. She still sat sewing, 
her head bent, and apparently peaceful ; but in all the chatter, 
and there was much of it and “culchahed,” nobody addressed 


86 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


her. When her head was bent, there were some curious little 
kinks in her hair near her neck. He began to wish, vaguely, 
that all the others were not there. He also began to wonder 
what he was going to do, now that Mrs. Courtman had deserted 
her. Even Augustine in magenta would have done something. 
That was only parochial. 

Deciding to be only parochial, he at last broke away from 
the others, and went up to Mary and greeted her. His manner 
was a little formal. Hers a little self-conscious. She had not 
seen him since Lady Jiberene’s party, and was feeling a trifle 
hurt at his silence after her confidence in the cab. He began 
blandly — 

“And what is your work?” 

“Drawn linen work,” she answered demurely. 

“Ah — very nice. Why drawn, though ?” 

“You see, I draw the threads very carefully — so. That makes 
a sort of opening upon which I work.” 

“I see.” 

But Miss Ethel Holden, also seeing an opening upon which 
she could work, now came stalking up to interrupt this dialogue 
for her own ends. She was a thin, dark girl like a hungry bird, 
and wore a dark red coat and skirt with an abnormally long 
back. Less definitely effusive than her mother, her metier was 
superciliousness, and she made constant, if silent war, upon the 
interloping Mary who was at one time too pretty to be endurable, 
and too discreet to be get-at-able by would-be enemies. That 
she dare speak to the vicar ! Was he not, like Giotto, the Hol- 
dens’ own? Here was her chance. 

“And how are the Hoydens ?” Cartyn was saying. 

Miss Holden marched up and plunged herself straight into 
the conversation unasked. 

“Oh, do you know the Hoyden Club? A most charming col- 
lection of brilliant literary women !” she said, with her back 
turned to Mary. 

“Are they?” said CaiWn, suddenly belligerent, he could not 
have said why. 

“Oh yes. How naughty of you to doubt it ! Mother goes 
there — she’s not a member, but she knows one of them. She 
knows so many people of all kinds. This is being artistic !” 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


87 


“Is it really?” said the vicar. “Then I must be quite an Old 
?^Iastcr. You should see my visiting-list !“ 

“Oh dear, yes,” said Miss Holden deprecatingly. She sud- 
denly turned and her jealous eye fell, possibly with intention, 
upon Mary as she spoke. "A very mixed one, no doubt!” 

“Mrs. Fresne,” said Cartyn, his very voice softening as ho 
.said the name, and glancing down at Mary as she went on with 
her linen work, “belongs to the Hoyden Club herself.” 

“Do you?” said Ethel Holden, with as much ill-bred incre- 
dulity as she could reasonably get into the phrase. 

“Oh, Pm the secretary there,” said Mary, half-laughing, and 
hardly glancing up from her work. “1 do it for a salary. You 
can’t call me literary or artistic.” 

“Oh-h,” said Miss Holden, but she pronounced it “E-augh" 
with apparent guttural effort, very much prolonged. It con- 
tained worlds of deprecation, slighting pity, and disgust, but 
Mary only dimpled over her sewing, glad to see the long back 
of Miss Holden turned to her again. Miss Holden was of course 
too artistic to consort with people who earned their own living. 
What could be more painfully common? 

But Cartyn was watching closely. The weakest point in “cat- 
ty” women’s attacks is the fact that they never give decent men 
credit for being able to see through their meanest moves. At one 
time he would not have done so. But his recent experiences with 
Florence Courtman had opened his obtuse masculine eyes quite 
suddenly. 

He now found his carefully prepared “parochialism” blazing 
into a quite definite and schoolboyish rage against feminine in- 
justice and insolence. Before he had time to think of the method 
approved by his clerical amour propre (a thing he had always 
hitherto designated as his conscience), he found himself saying — 

“Mrs. Fresne, I should like to continue the conversation you 
and I had in the hansom. I think I have some odd news fo^ 
you. Have you heard again from your friend?” 

With one supreme up-leap of superciliousness, distended eyes, 
and furiously pushed-out lips, the long-backed Ethel Holden 
stumped indignantly away. Conversation in a hansom ! It was 
awful, incriminating, volcanic ! She fled to pass on the horrible 
tale. 

Mary looked up briefly. 


88 


A SHEPHERD OE KENSINGTON 


“Perhaps we had belter not go into such a long story here, ’ 
she answered, but not ungcntly. “You were very kind, but 
perhaps I ought not to have chattered about my affairs. It is 
pretty well over and forgotten by now. A week has passed.’ 
Her self-conscious, hurt tone, brought back all his clerical vanity 
and nervous terrors. Groups of the Crafts Guild were already 
glancing in their direction. Was she, too, making too much of 
his interest? 

“Really, I am anxious to give any assistance,” he said, with 
drawal chilling his tone. “Of course 3^011 must know, as .; 
clergyman — I ” 

“You find women and their quarrels a great nuisance,” re- 
torted Mary, tossing her chin. She rose abruptly, and folded 
up her work, quickly for her. who had slow, deliberate ways. 

“Now, really ” 

“Yes, really. We arc a bother. Good-night, i\Ir. Cartyn. 1 
am always off early like this. 1 have to be up pretty early to get 
to work.” 

She slipped off, leaving the last protesting word on his lip^i 
unanswered. She already wore her hat, and hurried out into 
the spring night, passing along the pleasantly unpassengered 
streets to her little home. The borough councirs people were 
watering the roads with something fresh and pungent with car- 
bolic, and the nice clean odour and the long sweep of the wet 
streets under lamps seemed almost festive on this warm May 
night. 

But she was in one of her rare tempers. 

“He tries to be a man and a clergyman at the same time,” she 
said to herself hotly. “It won’t do. Now, which did God make 
first? — the human soul or the official? Will you have the par- 
ish’s approval, or you own heart’s? I thought he was above 
his traditions. But I see he was only trying momentarily to 
peep up out of the groove which has him like a vice. Well, 
well ! Men are only children playing at life. They usually learn 
its meaning when they are dying of old age!” 

She went back, a little embittered, to her duties at the Hoy- 
den Club. At this hostelry vivid things were happening. The 
members were up in arms, and uproar prevailed against the 
insult offered to their chaste walls by the defiant action of 
Lady Jiberene. To give a big party in their very teeth, they 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTOxM 


89 


said, and to miss out all her opponents, but to invite the secre- 
tary, required fierce protest. And that protest took strange 
forms. Much of it was denoted by whisperings and gurgled 
laughter, half-heard conversations in alcoves, in which a great 
number of “S’s’’ appeared to make up the syllables — angry 
women always found their “S’s” very distinctly; it would be per- 
liaps a severe comment to add that so do snakes and geese and 
cits, except that tliis happens to be one of Nature’s laws, and 
therefore only an odd coincidence, and not to be viewed ofifen 
sivcly. 

Lady Jiberene would have had a bad time of it just now, had 
she been a sensitive woman. But happily for herself she was 
not, neither had she the tiresome faculty which distinguishes 
very acutely between celebrity and notoriety : she was, in facn 
one of those Olympian beings who consider all notice, however 
unflattering, to be a tribute to greatness, and therefore felt 
herself ennobled and crowned rather than annoyed or humiliated 
by the ferment her high-handed action had caused, just as many 
modern politicians do. After all, she said to herself, a great 
society leader must encounter these crises. It is part and parcel 
of greatness: was it not, as such, an intense compliment? So 
she fussed about the club whensoever she found time to go 
there, and thoroughly enjoyed the sensations she created, feel 
ing herself to have at last outdone IMiss Jacques and her “crew.” 

But for Mary matters were not so easy. She was bound to 
those chaste halls by the exigencies of earning her living, and 
could not, like Lady Jiberene, whisk off contemptuously in a 
smart electric car whenever the Jicques' contingent became ui» 
bearable. She had, in fact, to bear the brunt of the whole 
situation in a manner she had not dreamed of when she hati 
weakly consented to attend the party, hlad she imagined the 
consequences of this ill-fated act, she would certainly have risked 
offending her kind patron, rather than bringing such a storm 
of indignation down upon her head. For it became only too 
clear to her that she was to be looked upon a.'^ T/idy Jiberene’s 
scape goat, and as such, the hands of all the Jacques’ faction 
were determinedly against her. 

Monotony, from this time forward, ceased to be her portion, 
for she never knew from one moment to another what form 
tlie general indignation would take. The duties of a secretary 


90 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


are so unending and so various, and the limitations oi a com- 
mittee’s power so ambiguous, that she ^continually found her- 
self in most unexpected “hot water” over trifling technical ma<:- 
ters connected with her work into which, up to the present, no 
one would have thought of interfering. 

She was in the midst of this thrilling guerilla warfare, trou- 
bled and anxious, when to her amazement a letter arrived from 
Cartyn. Perhaps no one but a woman would ever know quite 
the joy that that little note in its small, stiff handwriting brought 
to her, as it arrived by an afternoon post at the arid halls of her 
daily occupation. It was a hot, dry May that year, and the 
broad blaze of afternoon sun seemed to beat into the high club 
windows and intensify a certain faint odour of rather old Tur- 
key carpets and stale tea and tobacco that had become part of 
the place in her imagination. Sitting in a little dusty back office, 
in a sea of correspondence, after having received a severe “wig- 
ging” from the committee, and several milder complaints from 
wandering Jacquesites, Mary received this little. Arm, blue note, 
with its black inscription “St. Chad’s Vicarage” as a messenger 
from a far kinder, juster world, a world of vague happiness 
and hope and sympathy. She connected it in some way with the 
sunshine and gayer airs outside, beyond the hot windows and 
roofs shutting her in, and in her enthusiasm at holding it in her 
hands as her very own, blushed softly over her stuffy desk, 
and smiled to herself. Only a woman, perhaps, will also under - 
.stand that seeing his name signed by himself for the flrst time 
had an unspeakable fascination in it — “James Cartyn” — James! a 
name she had always disliked so very much. There is a tre- 
mendous charm in a man’s power to hallow suddenly a name we 
have always hated. At that moment Mary would not have had 
Cartyn called Lancelot, or Perceval, or Reginald, or anything 
else but James — the sinister title of a king who ran away from 
his country, the name of lago, the traditional name of a lackey. 

Well, at all events, he was a man again for the moment 1 
.A.nd now, like any idiotic woman, she forgot she was angry 
with him, and looked at that little signature as at the seal o^ 
Sant lago d’Espada, James of the Sword, the Patron of Spain, 
conquering the Moorish hordes in an armour of silver scallop- 
shells 1 She was not wise — she was just silly — and when is a 
woman happier than that? 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


91 


'The note said that he would be so pleased if she would speak 
to him to-morrow, after the evening service. He had seen Mrs. 
Courtman a week ago, and would like to tell her about their 
interview. 

She noticed that he named the vestry as the place to see him, 
as he would to a poor parishioner. He did not offer to come 
again to her house, and put jonquils in Benares bowls, or cut 
bread and butter. 

She did not care about that. For all his sudden withdrawal 
into the ecclesiastical proprieties, she said she had his eyes 
when they lighted up, and his brown face when it went browner, 
and his hand when he did not know that it lingered. So she 
laughed almost mischievously over the grave little note, and 
the concession it involved, and went to the office glass and fluffed 
up her hair for no earthly reason. 

After that the Jacquesites pricked her in vain. Miss Hyde, 
boy-voiced and autocratic on the subject of certain circulars not 
sent out: Miss Jacques about the stuffiness of the club drawin- 
room, the temperature of which was a thing the secretary must 
see to : and Mrs. Gigshaw, grinning sweet innuendoes containing 
carefully laid traps to catch Mary betraying herself in Hoyden 
politics, now ceased to be more than mere shadowy terrors, and 
she bore them with a good-humoured smiling patience that must 
have been disconcerting to all but the Jibereneites, just now in 
full ascendant and madly dancing. 


CHAPTER IX 


The old verger sidled along the aisle, surveying the still linger- 
ing congregation with an eye baleful yet not unresponsive to the 
main chance, should it come his way. A Sunday evening con- 
gregation offers fewer main chances, however, than most, es- 
pecially in fashionable London, and at a church like St. Chad's, 
famous for its music and splendid services, was composed chiefly 
of the classes who prefer to do something in the world them- 
selves than wait for others to do it for them — in fact, a congre- 
gation unconsciously adopting the good Hoyden’s motto of “do- 
ing things.” Consequently the verger’s occupation was moment- 
arily gone, as his raison d'etre, in his own estimation, was to do 
odd jobs at a brisk profit, for the unthinking fashionables, in- 
curably addicted to the habit of tipping, who flock there by hun- 
dreds in the morning. It must be admitted, lest the honour of 
Mr. Cartyn as a vicar be trampled in the dust of commercialism, 
that the verger was not of his choosing, but was, indeed, an 
"ancient institution,” harking back to an age of joyous bumble- 
ism, richer in profits to traders of his class, an age when church- 
going was the fashion. In those palmy days the present vicar 
wore short holland skirts and ankle strap shoes, and was not 
dreamed of at St. Chad’s. But though times had changed the 
verger had remained, and was now tolerated only on account of 
his great age — growing rapidly greater every time he told it, 
which was very frequently — and his bygone record of past ser- 
vices. Though the new vicar had fought for his retention vigor 
ously on these claims at a famous vestry meeting he was not a»^ 
all grateful, far from it. He considered that quality childish. 
He also considered the vicar childish, and very constantly al- 
luded to “boys” in small and trenchant conversations thrust into 
odd moments : he even so designated a famous bishop of only 
sixty years, so that his meaning was sadly too plain. 

He shot his keen little eyes in and out amongst the quiet 
crowd, as though looking for some one. To him the pungent 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


93 


odoi:r of extinguished wax candles in a hot and stifling atmos- 
phere, the last few bars of “Handel’s Largo,” and the sound of 
clamped heels striking coldly on stone, were sensations familiar 
and d'^lightful. in that they represented church over for the day; 
and it was not that he was irreligious — who will dare to say so, 
seeing the years that he had done his part to the very best of 
his lights? — but that, like all good workmen, including the “Vil- 
lage Blacksmith,” the end of a solid day’s duties successfully 
performed gave him a sense of grunting satisfaction. lie hardly 
needed the “night’s repose” of the poem, however, having man- 
aged a large slice of that during the sermon. He was only 
honestly glad that the final service was finished, and expressed 
this feeling by waving a bunch of keys noisily and thumbing a 
verdi-gris encoated extinguisher in a manner suggest ive_ of bus'*- 
ness. 

Mary was sitting by a pillar, a little to the side. There was a 
tired-looking man in the pew in front of her, thin-faced and 
pale, with black clothes having the appearance of being preserved 
and worn with great care ; he too was lingering as long as he 
could in the warmth and quiet, with the last sensation of the 
music lingering in his ear. He might be a poor clerk, or ill- 
paid shop-assistant. Mary’s eyes travelled to him kindly, as she 
felt in herself the inward troubles of his life, without so much 
as knowing them ; they were one in the free-masonry of the 
great Poor Man of Galilee. 

The verger stopped by Mary’s seat and glanced at her with 
an eye of shrewdly stern scrutiny. 

“If you’re Mrs. Fresne,” he croaked in a tone he called a 
whisper, but which, by its very creaking qualities was muc>^ 
louder than an ordinary speaking voice, “the vicar would like to 
speak to you?” 

She got up at his beckoning and followed him. 

She found the vestry empty save for the few church servants, 
busy putting away the various paraphernalia of a Sunday’s ser 
vices ; the choir had gone, and the fire in the grate was low and 
ashy. The verger knocked with the head of his staff on <-hc 
door of the inner vestry or sacristy, and Mary was admitte*' 
at once. She found Cartyn standing by the mantelpiece; he at 
once came towards her, apologising for venturing to send for 


94 


\ SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


her, his usually pale face flushed and emotional, and animated 
by an expression of strange intensity, 

Cartyn was suffering from an attack of real penitence. In 
his passionate outcry against Florence’s misunderstanding of him 
he had rashly included Alary, who was only sinned against, not 
sinning. 

Having decided henceforth to adopt a priestly aloofness irom 
all feminine troubles, he was now conscious of the injustice of 
including her in his sweeping definition of all things un-churchly, 
7. e. “the world. She had done nothing to deserve it. Indeed, 
her method of snubbing him at the Crafts Guild had had salu 
tary effect. He felt its lash, yet half resented it. She found 
him, therefore, remotely attired in a cassock and sash, trying 
to look severe and indifferent, but rather too bright about the 
eyes for his part. 

“Do come in,” he said, in those faintly sing-song accents he 
had always used when dealing with the unregenerate in a patient 
manner. “I felt it my duty to tell you that I saw Mrs. Court 
man last week.” 

Mary’s eyelids flickered. 

“Did you?” she said. 

She seemed enigmatical for a worldling, so he went on. 

“Do sit down. You recollect what I said to you in the cab, 
Mrs. Fresne?” 

She nodded. 

“You did not like my saying what I did. And I still adhere to 
it. Will you — shall I be considered interfering if I ask whai 
you have done about the matter?” 

“Done? Nothing, of course.” 

“But why of course?” 

“I mean I have done nothing because I have heard nothing.” 

“Didn’t Mrs. Courtman write to you, then?” 

“No. But I did not really expect it. That sort of thing takes 
time. Why?” 

“Why?” He looked at her from where he stood by the vestry 
table. “Didn’t you know? She has gone abroad.” 

“Has she? No, I didn’t know. But she travels about a great 
deal. That makes no difference. However, since you have 
been so kind as to write to me and take a real interest in my 
affairs, I may as well tell you that on thinking the matter over. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


95 


1 do not think 1 shall take any — anything from her now, even 
if she offers it.” Her face flushed slowly. “I know you thought 
me wanting in pride,” she added, ”even to consider the idea : 
hut you know in India we were once quite dear friends. Very 
dear friends can do these things.” 

“Flush, hush, please!” he said. “I never thought that. My 
reason was one that I cannot explain to you.” 

Though he still stood under the ugly gasjet in his cassock and 
sash, he had already forgotten the sing-songy voice. She was 
too wonderful when she went that colour right to her neck, like 
a dawn-coloured begonia. She made you forget resolves of all 
sorts. 

“Well,” she said, rising, “there's nothing more to say,” per- 
haps a little disappointed after the elation of getting a note from 
him, and after looking forward to this interview. He seemed 
so dry and official and remote after all. “If she has gone away 
she has probably forgotten all about it, and me. She leads a 
very busy life. I am only sorry, now, that I was so taken by 
surprise by her suggestion, and even at her manner, that I may 
have seemed to have jumped at her offer. I suppose paupers 
must'nt be proud ! But I do wish, now, that I had refused it 
outright.” 

Again he was confronted with the difficulty of explaining. 

“You didn’t jump,” he said eagerly. “And I am sure you 
need not blame yourself. I assure you I speak truly. She is a 
capricious lady and full of impulses ; but of one thing I am cer- 
tain — I know — she did not do anything in idle patronage. I do 
know that.” 

“It would not be like her, certainly. She was not given to 
that sort of thing in the old days. She was, as you say, always 
impulsive and full of headstrong freaks, but she was too — too 
go-ahead, somehow, to do anything so paltry as to play upon mv 
reduced fortunes for the mere value of patronsing. No, I exon- 
erate her from any base intention whatsoever — she is a busy, 
rushing, run-after society woman. The probable explanation i.s 
she has not time.” 

His anger rose at the spectacle of her kind defence of her 
friend, her friend whom she “exonerated from any base inten- 
tion,” whilst that friend treated her most basely I Yet his lips 
were sealed. But if so his heart went out all the more towards 


96 


A SHEPHERD OE KENSINGTON 


her in her undeserved adversity, so free from complaining o^' 
Selfish posing. She s'^cmed to take her position as naturally and 
as beautifully as though it were net an ignoble one, but some- 
thing dignified and great. 

Just then the verger came lapping at the vestry door, three 
or four loud determined “raps.” “Boys” require constant and 
sharp overseeing. Cartyn opened the door. “Mrs. Holden to 
see you, sir,” said the verger, looking in at Mary past Cartyn’s 
shoulder, not with authority but merely admonishing regard, as 
if to say, “For goodness’ sake, young woman, take yourself off, 
do ! It's time I got home to my supper and my Referee." 

“Ask her to wait one moment,” said the vicar. 

“No,” Mary interposed; “Fm going now. Thanks ever so, Mr. 
Cartyn. We have had a nice talk, and I promise you I won’t 
think of my old friend’s caprices again.” 

She held out her hand and he took it, his heart in his eyes. 
Then he released it and showed her to the outer vestry, where 
now the fire had sunk to depressing white ashes. In the middle 
of the room, by the mahogany table stood the lady of the Crafts 
Guild and “cultchah” fame, accompanied by her distinctly trou- 
bled-looking fat and white and heavy husband. 

“Ah, Mr. Cartyn,” cried the lady, in a tone of one welcoming 
another at least from drowning, and exuberant with relief. 
“Just a moment — about the Girls’ Club. May I?” 

She did not, however, wait to see if she might, but turned on 
Mary, who was passing out ,a glare worthy of a modern English 
trtigedian doing something Roman. She did it very well. She 
only needed a toga. Still her toque of Parma violets and her 
brown frock and sables did not in the least detract from her 
generally annihilating effect. One could still conceive the burn- 
ing city at her feet. 

Mary, not apparently scorched, glanced up and made a hesi- 
tating movement to bow. She knew the matron quite well, but 
had fully gathered that she was prickly with hostility of a hid- 
den sort. Mary was too well-bred to act a supposed ignorance 
of her personality, and so avoid a snub. But the lady met her 
soft attempt not only with the glare, but with a lorgnette in 
addition, a piece of final vulgarity that even Mary, used to Hoy- 
denisms resented. She turned away proudly, and saying “good- 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


97 


night” again to Cartyn, went to the door which he held open for 
her. The lorgnette followed them. Cartyn came back. 

“Oh, just a word, please,” said Mrs. Holden suddenly, far 
too suddenly, developing from extreme hauteur a grin worthy 
of a hyena or the Cheshire cat. This violent facial change 
struck a chill through Cartyn’s whole being, as usually happens 
to an honest man in the circumstances, but he courteously in- 
quired her wants. “Oh, about the club .Ethel says,” went on 
Mrs. Holden, pushing, or rather edging her bald and perfectly 
quiet husband to one side, “dear Ethel says, won’t you just 
run down and speak to them again one evening this week? She 
says they do so want to hear you — they do so love your ad- 
dresses. Ethel has got three new members ! Such a devoted 
girl, Mr. Cartyn, though I am her mother ! The dear child’s 
whole heart is in this club — won’t you come?” 

The vicar, not yearning to be engulfed in Miss Holden’s heart, 
was still polite and considerate. 

“I will try — not this week, but next,” he said. “This week, I 
fear, is quite full up. If Miss Holden will be so good as to lei 
me off for this week and put me down for the first day in the 
week after, I can arrange it.” 

Mr. Holden, bald, stout, stolid, and rather bored-looking, now 
nodded kindly, as if immensely relieved. 

“Thanks, thanks,” he said. “I am sure you’re a very busy 
man, and don’t want us here at this time of night. We’ll be 
off.” 

“Mr. Cartyn has plenty of visitors at this time of night,” said 
Mrs. Holden, with pointed emphasis. 

Cartyn said kindly, “I’m always glad to see my friends.” 

“Was that one of them — that young person who went out 
just now?” said Mrs. Holden, sarcastically gushing. “I really 
hope not, Mr. Cartyn?” 

“I am happy to say — yes,” said he, in the quiet tone that 
boded nobody any good, so often mistaken by his foes for weak 
surrender. Mrs. Holden, armed with lorgnette and impudence, 
was just the sort of foe to mistake all courtesy for yielding. 
The trait belongs to the truculent but poor-witted. 

“Then, my dear vicar — may a mother speak?” said she. Car 
tyn reflected that they generally do, asked or not, if of Mrs. 
Holden’s order. He therefore looked sternly inquiring but said 


98 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


nothing. So the mother spoke, with a short glare cast over 
her shoulder at the stolid husband, as a warning to pretend he 
wasn’t listening — to look more stolid than even Nature had 
made him, in fact. 

“The mother of girls — dear girls, Mr. Cartyn — must say a 
little teeny word of warning to — may 1 put it so? — a young 
man like yourself. That young person has a strange name in 
the parish — now, now, do>i’t be angry. I really know nothing 
against her. I only say there are rumours aboat. Her very 
singular appearance may quite account for it. Shall we say no 
more? I leave it to your good feeling to credit me with the 
very best of motives.” 

The task set to Cartyn’s good feeling was a heavy one. It was 
perhaps more than his could bear ; at any rate, the description 
of modest Mary as “singular” — after all, in certain circles that 
may quite honestly be one name for beauty ! — finished his stock 
of the commodity. 

“You speak, very naturally, from hearsay,” he said. “But I 
take this opportunity of mentioning that I know this lady’? 
entire history, a sad one; and one at least of her friends and 
contemporaries I also know, a lady of high position. I may hon- 
estly say that any parish gossip you have been listening to io 
unfounded.” 

Mrs. Holden did not like the term "parish gossip.” She bridled 
and said, “Well, dear Mr. Cartyn, all I can say is the opinion of 
the parish is at least worth considering.” 

“When it comes to me in deputation I will certainly grant it 
that courtesy,” replied the vicar, with gravity. Mr. Holden, for- 
getting to be as stolid as he ought, laughed out suddenly, in 
rather spasmodic, detached giggles, his little eyes twinkling. 

“We’re not that,” he said. “Come on, Emily, my dear, com; 
on. Good-night, vicar. The ladies will talk, won’t they? But. 
like you, I know a pretty girl when I see one !” 

With this entirely unexpected flash of conjugal defiance Mr. 
Holden was hustled out of the vestry by his wife who bowed 
“good-night” to the vicar, with the glare raging in her eye, 
while the grin, its opposite, held riot in her mouth and the creases 
in her cheeks. 

The verger, entering with painful promptness directly the 
outer door shut upon them, jerked his thumb in their direction. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


99 


while with the other hand he unfastened his Geneva gown pre 
paratory to going home for the night. 

“A tongue she’s got, and an eye, sir,” he said. “My eye, what ' 
an eye! Saw Mrs. Fresne come in here, she did, and trumped 
up a tale to come in too ! Oh I see it ! They don’t get over me. 

I saw her sittin’ on and on in her pew with her pore old man — 
pore thing! — long after I’d packed the rest of ’em hout. She 
says to me, ‘You won’t send us out, Tolley, will you?’ she says, 
with that yard-wide smile of hers. ‘Well,’ I says, ‘I’ve got to 
bundle ’em off a bit; if I didn’t I should have ’em praying ail 
over the place. You and Mr. Holden is different,’ I said, thought- 
ful like. ‘I suppose churchwardens do pray sometimes. But I’m 
not afraid of you doin’ it, nor yet stealing the church horna- 
ments.’ That shut her up ; then she come in here.” 

Cartyn shook his head despairingly and smiled. Tolley was 
incurable, -and quite beyond his rebukes. He bade the old man 
a kind good-night, and went out at last into the starlit streets, 
where still the Sunday sweethearts were pacing along the streets, 
their semi-shuffling feet making a constant and monotonous sound 
on the still warm night air. It was early May, and as warm aa 
midsummer. Fle turned aside from the vicarage; in that bachelo’* 
abode meals were of a floating order — oh, happy estate ! — and 
out his way through several streets by Lancaster Gate and out 
into the wider road running parallel with the park. Inside Ken- 
sington Gardens the trees loomed a soft black mass against th-^ 
dim, deep night blue of the clear sky, and the Albert Memorial 
stood out like a tall card-castle built by a giant baby. The scent 
of warm spring grass and fresh leaves and all the joyful mysteri- 
ous things of spring came to him through the iron railings, occa 
sionally spoilt by the odour from a petrol motor or ’bus passing 
to the right. 

Was he doomed to be always caricatured by the parochial 
Holdens? From originally having to take her part against Mrs. 
Courtman, he must now take it against his own parish — or aban- 
don her and her trampled cause ! 

He leant over the bridge that crosses the Serpentine and 
looked across the dim grey misty water to the lights twinkling 
in the black trees beyond, like soft yellow stars. Because, for all 
his self-defences, her eyes had been like two soft grey stars 
round which the world went dancing, for which' his pulses went 
racing. Which would it be? Love or the parish.^ 


1. OFC. 


CHAPTER X 


“Is it your play, Major?” 

“Yes, my dear lady. I’m going ahead.” She shuffled his cards, 
minutely studying them. 

“I’m not, I declare! Ill-luck always follows the wicked!” 

“Oh, goddesses shouldn’t fish, Ivlrs. Courtman ! There, that’s 
my coup. Wait — wait — yes, hooray ! Hand over the pool. There 
I’m doing grandly; I told you so.” 

Mrs. Courtman threw down her cards. 

“I’m miserably unlucky,’’ she said. “See what I've lost in this 
round only. Oh dear. Well, well, IMajor, I’m glad you’re so 
fortunate. You must have a better conscience than I have! 
Are you superstitious?” 

“Now, what do you mean by that?” said the Major, pocketing 
his winnings, as their friends moved away chattering, and light- 
ing a cigar — they were playing in the open air, “Am I supersti- 
tious? Signs and portents and all that? Oh well, when I hear 
the postman’s knock something mysterious and occult tells me 
1 shall get a bill, eh? And when my heart beats very fast in- 
deed, I know” — he bowed — “I am going to meet a pretty woman i” 

“Oh, but I am serious. I mean quite solemnly, you know.” 

“Bills are solemn,” said the Major; “if you have a banking 
account at all. Otherwise they are a joke, an absurdity. Mine 
are invariably humorous, I need hardly add.” 

“I mean, then, have you a conscience?” said Mrs. Courtman. 

“Need you ask?” said the Major. “Go to my tailor, dear lady. 
I have no other spiritual adviser. Have you?” 

“What! — a conscience or a spiritual director?” Mrs. Courtman 
was perfectly grave. 

“Either will do,” said the Major with equal gravity. “Y u 
can choose the one or the other — but I wouldn’t be burdei d 
with both.” 

“Major, you are so deep — I don’t understand you?” 


A SHEPHERD OK KENSINGTON 


101 


“Oh, I hope that makes me deep. What if it should indicate 
that I am ridiculous?” 

“I never quite know whether you are sarcastic or not. I 
suppose that is why you are popular in society — though that sort 
of thing would be horrid in a woman, wouldn’t it? Men stil’ 
have a better time than women, for all their freedom and eman- 
cipation !” 

“Poor souls!” said the Major; “it is hard on them to be driven 
to extract any glor}^ from being vaguely supposed to be sarcastic ! 
Isn’t that the last straw of a defeated wit?” 

‘'You know what you mean, dear Major — I don’t. No wonder 
the v;orld calls you clever. Really, you are very witty !” 

“Because you don’t follow my rubbish? My dear, good, kind 
Mrs. Courtman, allow me to sa\^ you are mistaken — but charm- 
ingly so. Come now, tell me why you talked of superstition?” 

“Oh, nothing. But I’ve got an idea that I can’t get rid of ’ 

“Oh, how unfortunate! I got rid of all mine ages ago. Reall>' 
it pays best.” 

“Yes, yes. Only unfortunately I am so constituted that idea'^ 
simply worry me — at times. You’ll say I’m growing old.” 

“Far from it. It is only the very young who have ideas.” 

“Not my sort. Major, did you ever do any one an — an injury? 
And if you did, don’t you find consequences following you, dog 
ging you at every turn? Do 3^011 think that sort of thing reall> 
brings ill-luck?” 

“Now we are getting at it at last ! No, I don’t. The un- 
righteous seem to flourish like a green bay tree ; still — look ove’- 
there at old Flookham,” he indicated ’a small elderly man, ver3‘ 
insignificant, but very elaborately dressed, who was sauntering on 
a neighbourly lawn; “the amount of people he’s helped to ruin 
by lending his precious title to bogus companies ought to weigh 
on his spirits a bit, but it doesn’t. There isn’t a more chirpy old 
boy in town. He simply bought his barony at a high price, and 
is now letting it out again at a higher profit. His path is strewn 
with slain — but, hark, he is humming a song.” 

“Oh, that is only business. Sins in business don’t count. If 
they did, so many people would have to be cut that there would be 
nobody left to know, would there? Besides, even Lord Hook- 
ham must have moments. Major — moments. In the small hours 
of the morning now, when his head will not let him rest and his 


i02 


A SHEPHERD OP KENSINGTON 


false teeth are out — it is horrid to think how unpleasantly real 
you feel without your teeth. It gets at you more than any amount 
of sermons.” 

“The ever-frank,” said the Major, waving his hand toward^j 
his companion. "Mrs. Courtman, had you met Socrates you 
would have out-rivalled him on many philosophical points.” 

“Oh well, if you won’t be serious it’s no good, I suppose. But 
at any rate I refuse to believe that Lord Hookham is happy. 
Happy men don’t talk to themselves, and walk about quickly like 
that, and argue with everybody.” 

“Still; he’s trying to live. Look at his endless health-cures. 
He must find life livable?” 

“Oh, but that’s the worst sign of all ! He doesn’t find life so 
livable as the next life so utterly unlivable, that he must hold 
on to this as long as he can. I always suspect a man who eats 
tabloids and takes rest-cures of a bad conscience.” 

“And a woman of a bad complexion?” 

“Oh, that 3^011 could see for yourself.” 

“I deny it. Usually no one ever does see it at all.” 

“Well, for my part, I left town because things were all going 
.=o badly with me. I lost half my income, very nearly, at bridge 
•n three months, and my doctor died, and my friends all got 
tiresome. That’s a horrid feeling when all your friends suddenly 
get tiresome, isn’t it? Mine w'ere awful. I never saw such a 
set. So I came out here to St. Moritz to get away from them.” 

“And yet here is Hookham staying at the same hotel after 
all ! No wonder you are searching for a hidden crime in your 
past to account for him ! It would be a good, rousing crime too, 
to account for Hookham being sent as a punishment. What was 
it — forgery, or Free Trade, or bad dinners, or bad debts? IL 
should be interesting.” 

“Oh, it was only gossip,” said Mrs. Courtman ; “or scandal, 
if you like to call it so. But I’m certain it is dogging my path; 
everything goes wrong wdth me. I can’t tell you the simple sheaf 
of ill-luck I’ve had lately! I’m in one whirl of bad news and 
things.” 

“I’m so sorry ; it must be bad too, for you look quite worried. 
But there are wa>'S of averting consequences and things, aren't 
there? Let’s ask Hookham; he’s been at that dodge all his life, 
pretty nearly ; he must be quite an authority. Eli ! Hillo !” he 


A SHEPHERD OE KENSINGTON 


103 


suddenly hailed the distant gentleman madly. Mrs. Courtman 
protested in horror. 

“Oh, Major! Oh no! Oh dear, how rude we must look’ 
Come along, since you’ve been so silly — we must go to him and 
say something! He’ll think us horribly ill-bred. I wish 1 
naciirt spoken. How awfu’ of you !” 

But the old gentleman in question seemed quite undisturbed, 
though he certainly turned and looked back at the sound of the 
the Major’s “Hilloo.” 

They got up and sauntered towards him, Mrs. Courtman wear- 
ing one of her sweetest smiles, but showing her annoyance in 
her shoulders which had an ominous movement. These things 
did not trouble Lord Hookham, who surveyed, the approaching 
lady with a certain faint curiosity, entirely untinged by admira- 
tion, as her tall form, simply and exquisitely gowned, came sail 
ing across the smooth lawn like a fair frigate in full sail. 

“Major Fragge was so rude!” she cried. “He would hail you, 
Lord Hookham. It’s all about nothing. In fact it was to tell you 
that he and Mrs. Darner beat me and Sir John at bridge.” 

“Don’t believe her, Hookham,” said the Major; “it wasn’t. 
It was to ask you what you would do if you had a bad con- 
science. I’m only putting a case, of course, of course !” 

“What’s a conscience?” said the old man, his yellow shrunken 
face wearing an expression perfectly serious and unmoved, as 
he looked back at them with his heavy-lidded, lack-lustre eyes — 
his eyelids were the only marked features in his face. He stood 
still, his little thin arms akimbo to his narrow body. 

“Oh well ” began the Major. 

“Do you mean a liver?” went on the imp-faced, but perfectly 
solemn personage before them. 

“Or acid in the system — probably?” 

“They do go very sour often, certainly,” said the Major. 

’“Or hysterical gout? Or a neuralgic heart, or so forth? There 
are lots of names for these things, and they take many forms,” 
continued Hookham gravely, in a thin and singularly unemotional 
voice, rather faint in sound, like some one speaking monoton- 
ously through the lid of a closed box; “but people show no com- 
mon sense, no common sense, in the way they treat them. Now 
I have a regime of infallible curing properties. Look at me— 


104 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


seventy-two — yet Fve the figure of a boy — look no more than 
fifty and feel younger than I did at twenty.” 

‘‘Oh well, one grows out of it,” said the Major. 

“What?” 

“Conscience.” 

“I object to the absurd names you call things.” 

“Well, do prescribe for Mrs. Courtman; she’s got it, anyhow. 
Suppose we call it neuralgic acid in her case — she scolds me for 
not taking her seriously.” 

“Is that one of the symptoms?” said Hookman, turning hio 
solemn, lugubrious eyes on to Florence with a faint hint of in- 
terest for the first time. All her sumptuous beauty and fascina- 
tion of bearing, the sheer fascination of perfect gowns and per- 
fect ease, had not appealed to him in the least, though several 
people, well used to smartly turned out women, had turned to 
look at her as she passed, as a singularly handsome example of 
her class; and in addition to this there was certainly something 
half-appealing and interesting in her extreme candour of manner 
and darkly lashed, rather stupid eyes, which men called innocent 
because they contained no hint of humour. Indeed, poor Flor- 
ence had none whatever; but that hardly made her innocent. But 
Hookham saw nothing of these things, nor the flecked sunlight 
on her full vdiite neck, nor the pathos of her attitude ; all he did 
see was some one with a possible disease, especially a modern 
and unexplainable one, and this at once attracted his manly re- 
gard. Such things were his hobby — his delight. 

“Have you tried walking in the May dew with no shoes and 
stockings on ?” he said, regarding her profoundly. 

“Oh no — oh dear!” said she. “Is that really recommended?" 

“I do it myself every morning before breakfast,” said Hook- 
man. “I am a standing example of its efficacy.” 

“But it isn’t May — it’s June,” said Florence. “Must I wait a 
year?” 

Hookham waved an impatient hand. “Do you suppose modern 
icience is dependent on seasons?” he said. “Mere seasons! Cans 
of concentrated essence of May dew may be procured direct from 
an American firm with whom I am in communication — Messrs. 
Perks & Jerks, of 559 Ninety-Second Avenue, New York. You 
get it in the form of small crystals or globules, and it should be 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


105 


sprinkled on wet grass before you walk across it. Any servant 
with sense can do it for you.” 

“I think ril get my servant to do the walking too, while Em 
about it,” said Florence. 

“No,” said Hookham, with perfect equanimity. “You must 
really do that yourself. That is indispensable. I can see you 
are in a very precarious state and need some immediate cure.” 

“Can you?” said Florence, her face paling. “Oh, but how? — 
why ? — what ?” 

“You will pardon me,” continued Hookham; “but I feel sure 
I observed you at the hotel going straight through the ordinary 
menu. Let me warn you against menus ! They are sheer murder. 
My dear lady, a little raw barley scattered by hand into a tumbler 
of Appollinaris water once or twice a day would do more for 
your case than all the food or doctor’s stuff in the world ! Look 
at me !” 

They did look at him, and Florence shivered. 

“I wish I’d brought a magnifying glass,” said the Major re 
gretfully. 

“I take practically no food except a kind of wonderfully stimu 
lating sawdust called ‘Samson Agonistes’ ” continued the little 
lord of finance reflectively, his lizard-lidded eyes still resting 
thoughtfully on the healthy, Juno-built form of Horence as she 
stood at attention before him. “It has most remarkable proper- 
ties. A single pinch of it will nourish the entire nervous system 
for the space of twenty-four hours. My table d’hote is white of 
egg, sparingly used, with a pinch of cocoa-nut fibre, chemically 
prepared, stirred up in it. Cocoa-nut fibre is the new fibre builder, 
a most important and marvellous discovery. I would beg you 
to avoid meat, milk, wine, vegetables, fruit, tea, or sweets — the> 
will tend to the production of poisons in tlie nerves, a fatal 
result. Look at all these people?” he waved his little, cold, dry, 
yellow hand towards several groups of happy looking souls en- 
joying the music, the sunshine, and each other’s company in a 
manner innocent and healthy enough. “They are all examples of 
poisoned systems. They are choked by bacteria, by improper 
food, by every excess, by every possible dietary folly! They arc- 
doomed men and doomed women ! As I walk about here — I do it 
for three hours out of every day on principle, and. as you may 
have observed plant my feet in a special manner as I walk suitea 


106 


A SMEPHERl) O ' KEXSIXGLOX 


to the exact poise of the liver and nerve-centres — I look over at 
them — the fools ! — and sec what the world is coming to by it;, 
own stupidity. Really, who wonders at the disease and sudden 
death all about us? Doivt they deserve it?” 

He stood, with his waxen face and mean bleached head, his 
shrunken form, his abnormal eyelids protruding over his dull 
eyes, his thin blue lips, and his toneless voice, and looked down 
upon a world of sunny pleasure-makers from a height of perfect 
self-confidence and self-congratulation. X'ever mind that the 
others were brown-cheeked, bright-eyed, merry, natural ; that 
was nothing. He, placing his feet as he walked for the special 
poise of his nerve-centers, was their superior. He, a cold corpse, 
still faintly living, and crawling about un.'^tirred by the warm sun 
•)f France, having no pulses to stir, found himself infinitely better 
:han these, who, wfith all their follies seemed children of the 
gods, children of nature, laughter, and love. 

The Major laughed. 

“Well, thanks, we’ll try all of it.” he said, and drew Mrs. 
Courtman away, not before she was entirely glad to go. 

“Horrible little reptile,” she said. “Does he live for his wretched 
health-cures ?” 

“He does now,” said the Major. "He used to dive to get hold 
of other people’s money. Now he’s got that he’s trying to ge'' 
their health — that he’ll never do.” 

“But has he really done such very — very abnormal things in 
finance? You know what things arc done, and nobody bothers.’* 

“He’s ruined thousands. And he’s made a big pile for him- 
self. He can’t really count his possessions. I wish him joy of 
them ! White of egg and cocoatnut fibre seems a poor goal to 
have lost your soul for !” 

“The question is, has he? Why shouldn’t he get rich, after all, 
if he is smart enough? You would. Major, if you could. So 
would any of us.” 

“Oh, rather ; but I shouldn’t care to have it built on lies, that’s 
all. Nothing can live on a lie.” 

Florence shook herself impatiently, and said, “Oh, for good- 
ness’ sake, don’t let us get serious any more. That poor old 
man has depressed me altogether ! Let us go and find the others 
and see if we can’t get them to come and something interesting.’’ 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


107 


The Major laughed. “Well, Hookham has cured you of your 
conscience ht,” he said. “I told 3'^ou he would !” 

But though Florence found her hosts and friends ready enough 
to join with her in plenty of gay expeditions, some of them al- 
most escapades, she could not altogether forget the interview 
with the old man who had learnt to kill his inner self, much less 
could she rid herself of Alajor Fragge’s light words, “Nothing 
can live on a lie.’’ He had said them so carelessly, as carelessly 
as we utler a passing commonplace, because, to him possibly, 
they were almost a commonplace, as are all vital truths to the 
just-living. It was just because he said them in that off-hand 
wa3', as a proved and tried experience of life now dismissed as 
settled, that they fixed themselves in Florence’s uneasy mind, 
and worried her whenever the gay scenes into which she plunged 
momentarily bored her, as all gay scenes have a strange way of 
doing for most of us, in spite of their supposed fascination. 

After all, in spite of his banter and nonsense, that was Major 
Fragge’s answer to her worried question, whether intentional oi 
not. Probably he hardly realised how well his words had applied 
to her case, for he was obviously thinking of Hookham’s, but he 
had unconsciously confirmed her in her wretched suspicions as 
to the ill-fortune attendant on her evil deed, and so far from 
cheering her had added final weight to her burden. “Nothing 
can live on a lie.” She heard it in the music that night, when 
they went to the opera, and it seemed to point to her again when 
some one said carelessly, “You're not looking so well, Mrs. Court- 
man. Are 3^ou feeling played out?’’ It seemed the natural reply 
to the question. 

It seemed as though living on a lie accounted for the black 
dragged-looking marks under her eyes that sometimes annoy'ed 
her when she looked in the glass. And when she heard a girl’s 
bright laugh, or saw some one dance very liglitly. or heard some 
one singing over daily things, she suffered a grim contraction 
of her heart, knowing that these things were beyond her, and 
attributing the whole trouble to that lie. Whether she was 
right is a matter of opinion. Either she had too much heart or 
coo little sense of humour for a schemer. In any case she was 
feverish, cross, and disappointed. 

She was used to men who were at least indulgent to her, even 
for follies — a pretty and rich widow with social tastes would be 


108 


A SHEPHERD EEXSIXGTOX 


likely to find much indulgence — and she had quite expected Car- 
tyn, the celebrated young vicar of a fashionable church, to meet 
her confession with the same spirit, possibly glossed over, she ad 
mitted, by a little picturesque ecclesiastical local colour, but in 
essence very much the same gentle humouring that she would 
have got from Major Fragge or any other of her semi-cavaliers. 
That sudden attitude of hardness and inilexibility on Cartyn's 
part had annoyed her, and she had shown temper at it ; neverthe- 
less she had hoped in course of time to break it down. But 
the discovery of his personal interest in Mary, and the rapid 
and correct conclusion to which she had leapt that he was in love 
with her, had roused into life all the smouldering selfishness of 
her nature, and flung her into a similar passion as the one that 
had been the cause of her original cruelty to Marcus Fresne’s 
wife. She had impulsively written, then, to friends about to fly 
to St. Moritz, and had gone oft with them in the middle of the 
London season, in a temper of mind only to be compared to a 
furious shaking of the dust of all seriousness off her feet. 

Had forgetfulness come with this move, all would have been 
well, and she would shortly have evolved a philosophy that 
might have carried her out of Cartyn’s ken altogether, but her 
whirligig of gaieties had been interrupted by bad news from 
England ; a mere matter of property failing to realise expected 
returns, money loss, and law trouble, enough to set her weather 
cock brain on its old questions of the ill-luck of evil-doing. 
Again, so pathetically absurd are the superstitious, a letter tell- 
ing of the marriage of one of her quasi-admirers was counted 
by her in the same category of malignant mischance, though 
these nuptials were not wholly unexpected, and she was far from 
caring in the least for the selfish, foppish, and delderly bride- 
groom. 

So much had this Nemesis idea become an obsession that sh? 
actually placed to its credit the loss of a topaz necklace, the diffi- 
culties over an extravagant costume, a passing remark of a 
woman friend that she was growing stouter, a trifling motor acci- 
dent, indigestion and ‘‘crows’ feet.” 

Certainly it was a catholic-minded Nemesis ! Out of all these 
troubles possibly the crows’ feet and strained eyes might be pin 
down to its credit — an unhappy temper would do that for most 
people — but to her it was answ^erable for all things evil. 


SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


109 


In such a manner the days passed on, gaiety after gaiety thor 
oughly entered into, and just aX odd moments that ghost of her 
own grim making clutching at her and destroying her good 
humour and comfort. Poor Florence ! She really was unhappy, 
and in her own confused, feverish, passionate way quite as hun- 
gry after something that evaded her as a starving man is hungry 
— so much so that she had to fill up every moment of her days 
to prevent the gnawing trouble of serious thinking. 

One forenoon her host. Sir John Hailey, looked up as she 
came out and joined him in the hotel courtyard, saying, “Have 
you heard about poor old Hookham? I thought it would hap 
pen.” 

“What — what has happened?” 

“Oh, he’s taken desperately ill. They’ve got all the swelles*^ 
men in the medical profession out here consulting up there over 
the poor old boy,” he waved his hand to a high white stone wing 
of the great hotel. “That’s his suite of apartments. He’s prettv 
bad, for they’re sending over to England for Welcome to con- 
sult.” 

The name was one of a great surgeon of royal renown. 

“But I thought he didn’t believe in doctors?’’ said Florence. 
“He has so many health crazes of his own.” 

"Oh, he’s past all that rubbish now, poor old chap. It’s a cas-^ 
of touch and go. There’s got to be an operation.” 

“An operation? Good heavens, what for?” 

“Cancer — malignant. I believe he’s very far gone. They sav 
he may be saved, but it’s a mere chance.” 

Florence glanced up again at the wing of the great building, 
showing dazzling white like marble against the deep, palpitating- 
blue of the morning sky. The Doric pillars on one of the bal- 
conies were gay with white pigeons fluttering cheerily in and out, 
a whirl of winged life, and some scarlet geraniums in green tubs 
flamed along the terraces and into the shady courtyard where she 
and Sir John were sitting. The strains of a distant band floated 
to them from the neighbouring gardens playing ‘Mendelssohn’s 
“Spring Song.” And yet here, over all this, hung the black 
shadow of death, an awful sudden visitor looming Jike a great 
folding cloud over that room and that wretched old man. 

“How horrible and sudden !” said she. 

“Sudden ! Oh no, surely not, he’s seventy-two. Lived his life 


no 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


loo, he has. Poor old boy, he’s got one or two things to answer 
for, 1 should fancy, though. I know two poor wretches he 
Alined.” 

“But he seemed so well.” 

“Oh, yes, he thought so. But ” Sir John shrugged his should- 

ers meaning nothing particular, but Florence’s quick mind sup- 
plied the sentence’s conclusion in her own way, “nothing can 
uve on a lie !” 

As the day wore on the others went about their usual excur- 
sions and amusements and forgot the tragedy in the west wing. 
The pigeons flew in and out of the Greek pillars ; the band con 
tinned to play; the hotel folk, with the traditions of their kind, 
were conveniently ignorant if plied with questions — a cancer oper 
ation in a hotel is not good for business, and Florence could dis- 
cover very little. Suave and smiling officials, if badgered, seemed 
to become suddenly ignorant, not only of English and German, 
but of their own language also. Even the language of tips 
seemed to have grown obscure to them. 

She wandered about restlessly, trying to attach herself to this 
amusement and that. In the evening, however, when the table 
a'hote assembled, and the crowds at the different tables chattered 
away amongst the lights and glass and flowers, she noticed that 
for once the band was not playing. She turned swiftly to Sir 
’^ohn, “There is no band to-nighf. Is it on account of ?” 

“Why, yes. They don’t want it talked about, though.” 

“Is he worse?” 

Lady Hailey looked up at her guest in surprise. 

“Worse, my dear? He’s dead. Didn’t you know?” 

“Dead?” 

“Yes,” said Lady Hailey, helping herself to an olive. “It’s 
awfully sad. Do try one of these — they’re Italian.” 

But Major Fragge, seeing Florence’s white face, said, “Mrs. 
Courtman didn’t know. I think we shouldn’t have told her. Only 
last week the poor old boy was telling her how to get rid of a 
conscience. After all, he wasn’t so bad.” 

Florence got up. “Pm not feeling very well,” she said. “I’T 
just slip outside on the balcony. No, no, don’t come, any of you. 
It’s only fresh air I want.” 

She slipped out on to one of the balconies, and looked into 
the still and starry night. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


Hi 

“I’m morbid," she said. ‘This sort of thing is utter follv. 
That poor old man’s case and mine have nothing in common — 
nothing. As a matter of fact, I am overstraining things quite 
absurdly by letting such a trifle trouble me at all. Clergymen 
have nothing to do but think of little things like this. They 
make mountains out of molehills. I wish I’d never seen Mi. 
Cartyn — or her. It’s spoiling my temper.” 

A fluttering sound above her head caused her to glance up sud 
denly towards the high-columned wing, now grey and misty in 
the clear starlight, where the dead man lay. From under the 
dark portico where at noontide the pigeons had disported, a bird 
suddenly flew out into the black night on hurried hasty wings. 
As it emerged from the shadow she saw that it was not a pigeon 
— its plumage was perfectly black. Whatever it was — kite or owl, 
or perhaps no bird at all but a large bat — it filled her with sud- 
den horror. She turned again towards the pink lights. 

“Ugh ! The lie that killed him !” she shuddered. ‘‘T shall have 
to leave this hateful place to-morrow ! It’s full of death and 
omens !” 


CHAPTER XI 


"Come in, Mr. Renel,” said the vicar from his study table. “Yes. 
\ cs. I had a question to ask about your guild. What is it that 
I hear — that they have asked one of the members to resign?” 

"Yes, yes, most truly,” said Mr. Renel, or rather he chanted 
it, monotoned it on “A.” He was the tall, thin, fair young man 
who had conquered the Manxman at the rectory meeting by the 
play of his finger-tips. He was immaculately clean, with an 
upper lip that hooked up in the middle over his front teeth, and 
an air of much detachment, and he carried his head slightly poked 
forward and on one side, with his eyes half-shut, 

“But why? What happened?” The vicar’s voice was more 
urgent than usual. It sounded almost angry. 

“My dear vicar, I cannot say.” 

“But you are president?” 

“No, no. Only the secretary. The committee settled this 
affair.” 

"But with your sanction?” 

"Oh yes, yes, certainly. Even so,” added Mr. Renel, as an 
afterthought. Newman at Oxford was his model, though pos 
fdbly that great man would hardly have recognised the portrait- 
had it been presented to him. 

"But what reason was given? Surely you do not let your 
committee do these — these odd things at will ? What was the 
reason?” 

"The lady did needlework — yes, yes — drawn linen for altar use, 
if I recollect rightly. She had not much time, I believe; she got 
the work in on Saturdays, she said. But the lady who is head 
of the needlework section complained that the work was not don.‘ 
quickly enough; there was difficulty and, I imagine, recrimination. 
I had no voice. The lady at the head of the needlework section 
has full control over her workers.” 

“Who is the lady at the head of the needlework section?” saiJ 
Cartyn sternly, in spite of himself. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


113 


‘‘Mrs. Holden,” replied Renel, still abstracted and far away 
from such wordly discussions. 

“Mrs. Holden? 1 see,” said the vicar. His voice would have 
shaken with indignation if he had spoken again for a moment, 
so hot his wrath rose within him. 

“So the young lady was asked to resign,” went on Renel, chant- 
ing his monotonous sing-song in perfect contentment. “She was 
a lady — well — never quite of our kind,” he added. “My recollec 
tion of her is — though I never notice these things myself — bu*’ 
1 was told that she had remarkable personal advantages. I was 
told so. Women are to me as a sealed book. But ” 

“They didn’t keep very sealed over this !” burst out Cartyn 
his blue eyes flashing suddenl3^ “They seem to have been un 
usually ready-tongued and precipitate in ejecting this lady, from 
all 1 can hear.” He could not, for the life of him, help his indig 
nation at her treatment, though it was not wholly wise of him 
to show it. 

“Well, well, my dear vicar.” said the saintly Renel peaceably 
“she did not mind at all. I do not think she was happy there 
Our work was too serious for her frivolous mind ” 

“Frivolous? What do you mean? Who said she was frivo- 
lous ?” 

Renel lifted the lightly tipped and graceful hand remonstrat- 
ingly. 

“Are not all beautiful women so?” he asked, his eyes on a fly 
on Cartyn’s ceiling. “1 am told that is so. Beauty is a snare, 
and of the world.” 

“I suppose jealousy isn’t a snare and of the world?” snapped 
Cartyn. “Or vulgar prejudice? Or injustice? Those are Chris- 
tian qualities. That will quite do; many thanks, Mr. Renel. 1 
will see Mrs. Holden, but of course I shall not interfere in the 
minor arrangements of your guild. Only 1 wouldn't,” h" added 
maliciously, “make a public announcement to the effect that ai< 
persons with — what d’ye call it? — ‘personal advantages’ will bo 
violently ejected. You might harm your chances of further 
feminine members. You might even lose Mrs. llolden herself 
if you made that clear enough! Most women would rather be 
expelled on those terms than kept on any others !” 

He turned on his heel. He knew the whole sickening story 
underlying this trifling evasion. Renel, possibly, knew nothing 


114 


A SHEPHERD OF KEXSIXGTOX 


of it whatever. He was far too much wrapped in his beloved 
church ornaments and the zeal of his guild to lend an ear to a 
scandal, even if he were not, it must be admitted, too much of a 
gentleman to do so. A tendenc}^ to uncharitableness or slander 
was not among his faults, and his committee had known him too 
well to repeat any such to him. He would have been quite capa 
ble, in such a case, of rising up and taking Mary’s side against 
them, as theoretically, and sometimes even in practice, he upheld 
the downtrodden. But his deepest beliefs were involved in the 
idea that all remarkably pretty women were of no use, if not 
even worse ; and that they were utterly foreign to all serious 
ecclesiastical work was with him a creed that no sane organiser 
could dispute. It has been said that he could get his theory 
of human nature on to his own thumbnail, and it will therefore 
be understood that he had only room for two types of women- 
those who were good and those who were pretty. So he had let 
Mary go, as one lets a captive butterfly out again into its own 
careless sunshine, with no ill-feeling or deliberate unkindness 
After all, he was “detached,” and that estate absolves you froiii 
studying the inner motives of committees, together with many 
other unpleasant duties, besides providing a halo on easy terms. 

Cartyn let him go without further argument. He himself had 
no right to defend Mary openly, and his doing so at this junc- 
ture might do her infinitely more harm than good. After any 
collision with the knot of exceedingly fussy persons who presided 
over guild affairs, it’s quite certain she would not care to return, 
even if he forced Renel and ask -Mrs. Holden to retract then- 
unjust decision and ask her to do so. 

Since that night of starlight on the Serpentine he had not 
ceased to dream hotly at the alternative choice that faced him — 
Mary or the parish. That she was intrinsically inimical to the 
parish he never doubted. This sort of interview with Renel con- 
firmed him in this belief. She was not cut out for a typical 
clergyman’s wife, he said. 

“They always marry ‘helpmeets,’ ” he reflected. “Those are 
ladies in drab felt hats. They are very useful. One is expected 
to marry that sort of lady. They have mackintoshes, and they 
ride bicycles. They work meetings very successfully. She does 
not dress smartly — she can’t afford it, poor girl ! — but somehow, 
she isn’t what ever\'body would expect me to marry. I couldn’t 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


115 


call her a helpmeet!” He sighed, and added, ‘‘She is much too 

pretty.” 

He was walking across the park at the time, in the Kensington 
direction. He had been to a meeting, politico-clerical, in the 
wilds of Marylebone. It had been for and against a recent Bill 
before Parliament — the chairman and a small scratch following 
very much “for,” and the meeting “against,” to the point of danc- 
ing. He had enthusiastically taken his part against the measure. 
He felt that he must get some fresh air. He was very proud of 
himself, because he had not seen Mary for nearly three weeks. 
To a mind submerged in such a groove as his, a picturesque 
triumph over self and its desires is a far finer attainment than a 
common kindness. Honestly he had kept away from the fascina- 
tion of her presence, truly believing that by so doing he was 
“testing” himself and his principles. Her point of view had come 
second to his own moral victory. Brother Anselm would have 
applauded this fine discarding of the troubling sex, although him- 
self followed in season and out of season by Miss Yearsley and 
Miss Limpole. Strong in his colleague’s good opinion, a mattei' 
which, united with his own moral vanity, he called his conscience, 
he cheerfully made his way home across the park, with the scent 
of dust and crushed grass in his nostrils, and the sight of little 
children and old men sailing toy yachts on the round pond 
vaguely before his eyes. 

He had passed the Albert Memorial, and was walking out 
of the park to cross into Queen’s Gate, when a figure approaching 
along the pathway leading from Knightsbridge Barracks by the 
side of the Row arrested his attention. He glanced back and 
half paused in his walk. The figure came nearer, and a group of 
people between them moved aside, and then he caught the face 
in full — it was Mary ! The blood rushed to his face, and without 
a moment's hesitation he went eagerh' towards her, all his lovc 
glowing in his eyes. Her face was white, her step slow, and 
her whole air flagging and weary, as though the heat oppressed 
her. And what was she doing here at this time of day? Her 
usual hours were so late. 

He simply went up to her and took both her hands in his. 

“Oh, to think of meeting you here !” he said, his voice real 
for once. 

She looked rp and smiled faintly, but as gladly as he. 


t 


116 A SHEPHERD OF KENSHXGTON 

“Why, yes!’’ she said. “And you!" 

“How is it? Have you left early?" 

Mary left her hands in his and but dropped her eyes, and b?f 
head dropped a little forward. 

“I’ve left altogether,” she said. “I’ve been asked to resign.” 

“You’ve left the Hoydens? Well, but isn’t it rather sudden?’ 

“Yes. In a way — of course it’s sudden. But I suppose I have 
had my suspicions — fears, that it would take place for some littlc 
time. 

She spoke in a tone of undisguised weariness. Her feet 
dragged as she walked,, as though she were utterly tired out. and 
to Cartyn’s shocked eyes her working attire in the cruel light or 
broad day looked absolutely sha’nby. He hardly liked lo admit 
it to himself, but she seemed already to have acquired the dreary 
outward signs of desperate poverty: her coat and skirt were 
shrunk with many v/inter wettings and, though neat in lit, looked 
worn ; her gloves, once a serviceable tan kid, were tawny with 
many fine old shades, dark browns and greens and blacks, worthy 
of Velasquez, no doubt, but out of place on a tan glove. Sh ‘ 
carried a little leather bag, containing her purse and handkerchief, 
and this, too, was worn shabby, and the imitation silver metal on 
its clasps was long since dulled to a deadened grey tint, while 
her boots, though neat in a sense, had gone whitish through long 
hard wear, and showed up terribly on the bright fair gravel 
decked with sunbeams. For the moment, Cartyn, in Marys 
name, detested the sun that brought its heartless pranks to bea" 
so unfeelingly on to this pathetic record of a winter’s hard, 
struggles. Gold, glaring, laughing, dancing behind the long green 
stretches of park trees, he seemed a vulgar god, making game of 
the bitter wrecks his equally cruel friends the winter storms had 
tossed up on this bright strand. Added to all this her lips were 
white, and loose strands of her hair, which she seemed too tired 
to make orderly, were blowing about her weary face, fanned by 
coy zephyrs whirling up suddenly from the dusty ground. 

He walked along for a moment by her side, not knowing clear 
ly what to do. The Row was still full of carriages and electnc 
motors, though the season was nearly over, and its flash of gay 
colours and laughing faces was a strange contrast to this wan- 
faced, sorrowful figure. People they met on the footpath stared 
at them a little, and in the rather thick crowd Cartyn had to 


A SHEPHERD OE KENSINGTON 


117 


acknowledge bow? from two groups of rich and well-known peo 
pie belonging to his own congregation, and these were certainly 
most openly curious as to his companion, with the frank ill- 
breeding of the would-be great. 

“You were going home?” he said, suddenly fired by an inspira- 
tion born of secret wrath at these encounters. 

"Yes.” 

"Come with me — somewhere. We'll decide where later. Come 
along.” He spoke eagerly and sharply. She was dazed and tired, 
and he had hastily signalled to a crawling hansom outside the 
park railings, and, before she quite realised his intention, had put 
her into it, and they were bowling along Kensington Gore in the 
western direction. 

She sank back in the stuffy dark blue cushions, glad, at any 
rate, of the rest and the respite from the ever-shifting kaleido 
scopic crowds out on pleasure and show. She glanced at Cartyn’s 
face, set sideways to her, and saw that it was paler and graver 
than usual, with the thin lips set in a sterner line. 

She felt she must rouse herself and cast off her sense of shock 
and depression that was weighing her down for his sake, and so, 
getting a brilliant, if conventional, idea from some placards still 
outside the Albert Hall, she asked him all about the education 
meeting, and its result. He told her, briefly and clearly, most 
of what had occurred, and gave outlines of the better speeches 
but his manner was absorbed and preoccupied, and she could see 
that he had many other thoughts for the moment. By Kensing- 
ton Church he Stopped the driver, and said, suddenly interrupt- 
ing her own speech — 

“Let us go and have dinner — or something. Then we can really 
talk.” 

She would have demurred, but he added, “Fm hungry. I don’t 
know if you are — but I’ve had an hour and a half at a hot meet 
ing, and hardly any lunch. Besides, it’s such a little I see oi yom 
Come, it’s quiet here.” They had turned into Church Lane, and 
he had alighted before the door of a little French restaurant 
with mahogany and latticed window-fittings, and, wearied out, 
she had no choice but to go in with him. 

It was a small and quiet place inside, flamboyantly decorated, 
but very comfortable, and happily it was empty, the hour being 
much too early for its usual dining custom. So they got a little 


118 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


table to themselves at the far end— the restaurant was funnel- 
shaped, like a twopenny tube — and a simple meal was ordered 
Cartyn waited for it with apparent indifference, in spite of his 
assertion that he was hungry, playing abstractedly with the Bri 
tannia metal topped mustard pot, and not glancing at his com- 
panion as he said suddenly and curtly, "Now tell me — why have 
30U left the club?" 

^'.lary was pulling off the Velasquez-shaded gloves. Her voice 
came falteringly. 

"There was a quarrel — amongst the committee. There alway; 
has been a sort of — of feud," she said. "It got worse and worse 
each day, and to-day it culminated in my dismissal." 

"Yes, but even for the sake of bitter feeling people cannot can 
ccl engagements without some excuse," he persisted. The slow 
blood mounted to Mary’s tired face. 

"Then one was easy to find — in my case,” she said, almost 
inaudibly. 

"What do you mean? They can know nothing about you — or 
that ” He paused. 

"They do," said Mary. "They have heard something. And 
they used that to dismiss me." 

"But how? Who has told them anything?” 

"I don't know. I can't think that Mrs. Courtman would — can 
Nou? Besides, she is away. Do you know a lady called Mrs. 
Gigshaw ? She lives in South Kensington — in the same part as 
Mrs. Courtman — Darnley Gardens." 

"I believe I’ve seen her — yes. A showy, loud old lady, with 
an absurd air of being a smart society woman. She goes about in 
a yellow motor. Yes, I recollect her now. Why?" 

"She is supposed to have been the instrument in ridding the 
club of my — my tainted presence," said Mary, laughing ruefully. 
"She meant no personal harm to me, I suppose; it was really 
her revenge on Lady Jiberene, who did not ask her to her party, 
but who asked me. You see that was considered a dreadful 
insult. She put the other side up, it seems, to this mischief in 
order to annoy Lady Jiberene." 

“Yes, Miss Jacques’ party — the rival party." 

"But how did Mrs. Gigshaw herself know anything about you?" 

"Ah, that is it. That I can’t say. She does not know Mrs. 
Courtman to speak to, so it cannot be from her. I know sh2 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


119 


doesn’t, because she was always badgering Mrs. Holden to intro- 
duce her, and ” 

“Mrs. Holden? What Mrs. Holden?” 

"Oh. Mrs. Alec. Holden, of Radnor Gardens. The lady of 
\our Crafts Guild.” 

Cartyn suddenly saw the clue. 

‘AVell, at any rate, Tm glad it is no: Florence. 1 am free to 
think well of Florence. That would have broken my heart, quite, 
1 think,” Mary went on. “Mrs. Gigshaw can make any michief 
she pleases so long as she leaves me my old friend’s memory 
untouched by .such a trick as that.” 

“Was Mrs. Holden a Hoyden? Surely not?’’ 

“Oh no. She didn’t really approve of them, but she came one 
day with IMrs. Gigshaw to see the club, and then she came again, 
once or twice. She came to show that she didn’t approve, I think. 
She always used her lorgnette very much — and her elbows. 1 
can’t say T was pleased to see her; she did stare so at me, yet, 
as I think you once saw, she is too proud to acknowledge me. 
It is awkward, as we have been introduced, and have often spoken 
at the guild. Still, one takes no notice of these things. So man> 
women are ill-bred nowadays that it is not astonishing, is it?” 

“No, no, not at all,” said Cartyn, but his tones were abstracted 
He saw now from whom the mischief came. He recollected 
poor old Holden’s clumsy but kindly meant attempt to hint to 
him that he had already heard something against Mary. He saw 
now, in his mind’s eye, the careful garnering of such hints by 
the man’s inplacable wife; her slow piling up of her treasure 1 
hoard ; her fruitless attempts to interfere with his own friendship 
with Mary; and now the glorious chance, thrown at her very 
feet, to injure the cause of all her spleen and jealousy, through 
the unspeakable mischief-making of Mrs. Gigshaw. As the 
dreary, feline, petty scheme, with all its accompaniments of 
miawings and scratchings, became clear to his mind’s eye, he 
experienced that supreme revulsion against the accepted methods 
of femininity that, sometime or another, all honest male students 
of human nature must undergo ; that pathetic mingling of surprise 
and indignation that makes a man want to get up and kick some 
thing very hard in a sheer access of contempt. 

People now began to drop in, singly or in self-conscious pairs, 
as the real table d’hote hour arrived, and they became aware 


120 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


that they were being looked at with the blatant and unblushing 
interest that companions in such places evince. After all, an 
earnest-faced man in clerical dress talking eagerly over a table 
in a modulated whisper to a young, good-looking but shabby 
woman, and never taking his eyes off her face would excite the 
half-resentful interest of any unemployed Londoners one migh^- 
name, and the usual speculative analysis, openly expressed ui 
immovably staring eyes and a certain almost imperceptible falling 
of the lower jaw, now began. There arc a vast number of per- 
sons who never do learn that they themselves are visible, but 
who will stare and stare and stare at others till all semblance 
of human intelligence has departed from their own faces, and 
yet remain delightfully unconscious that that which they openl> 
study may be secretly studying them. 

'I'he row of these students becoming more compact and definite, 
Cartyn suggested a move, and Mary and he came away after she 
had cursorily tidied her hair and straightened herself a little. 
She looked a different creature to the worn being he had met 
trailing her weary way home to a lonely lodging, and suffering 
the first hour of shock and disappointment ; the kindness, the 
sympathy, the cheery meal had done their work, and when he 
•suggested a walk or a drive she seemed quite willing and cheer- 
ful. But she would not hear of a drive. 

“Well, why not the top of a ’bus?” he said. “We could get 
some fresh air in a quarter of an hour if we made for Barnes 
Common. Shall we? Come along?” 

He put her on a red ’bus, feeling a delightful sense of defiance 
at what Mrs. Holden would say if she could see him now ! All 
the proprieties and conventions seemed to have retired to a fully 
deserved background in this hour of deep feeling and the pro- 
puiquity of real distress, and he even laughed a little to himself 
as he realised what a funny pair they must make together, a', 
this late hour, going cheerfully westwards, trundling on a ’bus 
like any young shop-assistant and his girl towards the sunset. 
They talked of her plans for the future. At Hammersmith 
Broadway they changed ’buses and drove along Bridge Road, over 
the river, silver and strong in the evening light, then between 
the lines of trim houses with their neat shrubbery gardens and 
tiny carriage drives to the corner leading to the common ; there 
they alighted and sauntered as any other two Cockney persons 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


121 


might saunter — only they were not arm in arm — over the scrub- 
by, furzy place, watching the lights flicker up here and there 
from the tree-embowered houses on the far fringe of the commoii 
as the blue dusk fell. 

He came to a decision. He and his scruples had brought upon 
her the loss of Florence’s help, his attentions had brought upon 
her the contumely of the parish ; his silence about her story had 
brought her this cruel dismissal from her duties. There was an 
instinct in him stronger than that of the cleric. It was that of 
the chivalrous gentleman. He would rescue her, as a lover. 

He took her hand now, in the cool blue shadows and the scent 
of invisible gorse, and said very slow, “Never mind all the world 
Leave all the world alone, and marry me.” 


CHAPTER XH 


Just for a moment all the warm home-lights round the common 
trees whirled about softly in the dusk. 

Just for a moment there seemed to be a measured sound or 
home music, as though all those cosy houses and all those familv 
hearths in a desolate, harsh, arid world, sang a chorusscd prean 
of welcoming to her, who was having a man’s home and love 
offered to her. 

Then the night wind came fluttering coldly by, bearing on it 
faintly the distant ringing of church bells. The sound recalled 
them to a sort of parochial consciousness. 

'•She said, “No, no,” and drew away, with a sob in her heart. 

“Yes,” he insisted, still holding invincibly on to her hand. 
“You shall.” 

But though he held her hand fast he was looking ar Her with 
inquiry, earnest inquiry, eager, sincere enough but — well, that 
there was room for it ! A lover does not inquire. A real lover 
takes, insists. Had he insisted then she would have yiHded. But 
she felt the faint chill of the inquiry like an embodiment of th"^- 
church bells’ far tinkle. 

His tall, thin figure, the shadow of his high tall hat against 
the evening sky’s faint opal, looming over the deep rather con 
tracted eyes that she could imagine better than see, the low dark 
bushes against the stubbly grass, the fluttering night-wind, the 
distant suburban houses, the thing he offered — it was all like a 
dream. It all seemed to have happened before, somehow. She 
was waiting still for that insistence. She had always waited, 
it seemed to her. 

“No,” she answered again. “It is impossible.” 

Still he lacked the lover’s daring greed. 

“But why?” he asked. 

“I shouldn’t do for the parish,” she answered, voicing with that 
ancient intuitive feminine genius his own actual thought. “A 
person in any kind of trouble could not be introduced to the 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


123 


’'archdeacon, could she? Or if the archdeacon was kind — he might 
bjing a man — what about the women? Oh no, no.” 

He winced a little. 

“You and I,” he replied bravely, “know what you are.” 

“I know myself,” she replied, under her breath. “But placed 
as 1 am I can do nothing to prove it to any one else — even to 
you.” 

If he had answered passionately then, put those near arms 
round her and insisted, been just a man, she would have yielded 
Rut there was a fatal pause, and the church bells came in on the 
night wind. They brought with them a very menace of the nar- 
rowest “churchly” spirit. In imagination,' by their very souna, 
one could see thin women in ugly hats going there in a stern 
handful, hear them answer their own alternative verse of the 
Psalm in cryptic accents, smell the mingled odour of russia 
leather and new oak and cold stone at the chill weeknight even* 
song, feel the dead chill of everlasting disapproval. They were 
an awful reminder. 

Carlyn felt it. It was inevitable. 'Was not this the call of 
his own, the warning voice from the shadowy things in which 
he lived? He paused a second to listen to it, half in rebellion; 
but in that pause he lost his hour. Abruptly the thin bells 
stopped. With a start he leaned again towards her. 

He spoke quickly, but after a long silence. Though she was 
unaware of it, he knew of what she was thinking only too well. 

“I cannot take that for an answer. Let me wait, Mary,” he 
said hurriedly. “You will think it over. Do not decide now. 
I have been too sudden.” 

"No,” said Mary, “it isn’t that. It is as I say. There is an 
insuperable barrier to my marrying again. I tell you I am in 
the position of a person accused of a crime — an innocent person 
— but still one unable to prove my innocence. You cannot marry 
such a person. Don’t try. You know the difficulties.” 

“Rut — if I believe the truth?” 

“Oh, yon — yes. But what about your people, your parish, all 
those who arc dependent on you, for whom you live? I could 
not come between you and them. And yet that is what I should 
do.” 

"I am indifferent to their opinion, good or bad! Do I care-- 


124 


A SHEPHERD OF KEXSINGTOX 


do wc care, Mary, if we have each other? Who, if he loved as 
I do, would care? The parish’s opinion!” 

“You would care — you would have to. It is your duty to care, 
because you are the chief and the leader. Should 1 not care 
seeing such a thing happen to you? Oh,. cant you hear them, 
Mr. Cartyn?— I can, as though they were all clamouring round 
me now ! ‘There is a story against her— oh, a most unfortunate 
connection. Yes, my dear, 1 have friends at Bahore. Oh, a 
vague story, yes ; but there is no smoke without fire !’ Why, 1 
can see their faces as they say it. I can see their bonnets. Oh, 
can’t you see their bonnets?” She laughed, rather bitterly, bu"^ 
her eyes were tearful. Cartyn shook his head with miserable im- 
patience. 

“What do these things matter? You yourself are a witness Uj 
yourself. Could any man or woman look into your clear eyes 
and believe anything but good of 3 '‘ou ? Does not Cod set a seal 
upon the face? I know it.” 

“You forget that it is not given to every eye to see — the seal of 
Cod,” she answered softly and sadly. 

“Then for those who cannot see it I care nothing at all !” 

Mary spoke quietly. “You care for your career, and for your 
work. You care for the good of your people you have in charge 
more than for yourself. If I did not think you did that it would 
not be — so hard — for me to argue like htis. It is because you 
are so beloved and so followed as a teacher that I cannot consent 
to do this thing, which would drag you down.’’ 

“How could it?” said Cart 3 m, passionately. “Such a falsehood 
could not drag me down, or 3 -ou either — the truth would always 
prevail. The truth is stronger than lies. It will prove itself.” 

“Yes, perhaps after long years, if even then. But meanwhile 
what would you not have to go through in my defence — my im- 
possible defence? Even you know nothing of the story, and if 
people came to you with it, you would have no answer for them. 
I shall never speak of it — it would do no good, even in my own 
defence, because the stigma has been fixed upon me in a way 
that makes my own protests useless.” 

“Suppose,” said Cartyn, turning suddenly and looking at her, 
“suppose I told you I knew the story? — not how I know, but 
just the fact that it was known to me?’’ 

“But you couldn’t. I mean you couldn’t know — the truth. If 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


125 


you have heard any story — any rumour at all — then it is the scan- 
dal. The truth is known only to myself and God.” 

“Another,” Cartyn paused, guarding his betraying voice care- 
fully, “another might guess it?” 

“No, no. No one could guess it. It is a long, wild tale of in- 
justice, but it sleeps in its grave!” 

“Mary, you tell me 1 Let me hear it from your own lips !” 
His voice rang out hot and passionately, vibrant with a new wild 
hope. Suppose he could induce her to tell him herself — then, in- 
deed, would his tongue be unloosed. This, at least, would not 
be confession. 

It would free him from his honourable silence, already galling 
like a chain round his feet. 

“But I can’t,” said Mary, very low, and turning her head away. 
Her accents were hurried and slurring, “I don’t know half of it 
myself. I was sent up into a hill-station. , Men made a fuss of 
us if we were young. Well, then, there was one made a fuss of 
me. I saw nothing in it. He was some one we knew quite well. 
He knew my husband. I was only a girl. I thought married 
women could talk quite safely to men. I did n^t even admire 
him; because I didn’t, I was just the more polite — women, honest 
women, are like that. They’re often sorry they cannot like par- 
ticular men, sorry they have limp moustaches, or long beards, or 
yellow hair, or something else they hate from their souls. So, 
regarding them as pariahs, they are polite to them. That was 
all I was. I don’t think he imagined anything silly. He was 
perhaps a little vain of our friendship, and boasted. But it was 
somebody else must have made the ridiculous, trifling matter 
into a scandal. There were several older women, jealous per- 
haps, who might have done it. I have often thought of that. But 
who it was I have never clearly been able to guess. My husband 
was at that time ill and half-maddened with his morphia habit. 
It is quite possible that a few words of chatter from som<' 
thoughtless person fixed the idea in his mind I That is all I 
can tell you. I know no more !” 

He had listened to all this breathlessly, his head bent down 
to hers, though he could see little in the dusky evening glimmer 
of her troubled face and eyes, already weary of her old, conjec- 
ture-ridden story. To her it had already the maddening stale - 
ness of an ancient law^suit. She had already learnt to feel dead- 


126 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


ened and weary in recounting it. Like all tine natures long 
harped upon by mean sorrow as a vulgar hand harps on one- 
string, she was lax and done to death long ago, and could give 
out no more tragic sound. Perhaps that fact made her suffer 
more, seeing that to him she must appear cynical. 

“What was his name?” he said jealously. 

She rallied at the sound. 

“His name was Vizier,” she answered. “He was a captain in 
one of our regiments up there.” 

“But you didn’t care up there?” 

“How can you ask? Of course not. I tell you I thought noth- 
ing of it. You would have thought nothing of it.” 

“But how could even enemies say anything against you?” 

“No one honestly could. But I was careless once, about re- 
turning alone with him from some party. We were delayed by 
an accident. Even then all could have been explained, but that 
some one chose to make ill of it.” 

Ah, if he would have taken her by force, told her (so truly!) 
that he did not believe it. But still the very silence that the bells 
had left was potent. 

He took her two hands then and kissed her. Yet in the void 
left by the bells, like two children who have been scolded, they 
turned round then and instinctively went in the direction of home. 
It was a loving, a sweet, a sacred walk amongst the gorse bushes 
in the soft night. They had for ever bridged over all silence, yet 
there was something fierce and irrevocable still between. Mary 
knew it with bitterness. She let her hand rest on his arm till they 
reached the edge of the common, that strong man’s arm that felt 
so kind and powerful. But she knew that in his mind there was 
a little tussle going on, for all his real love of her. She was too 
lonely to struggle against the encroaching touch and charm of this 
dear affection; but she knew, or thought she knew, that it had its 
limits — that the parish was a stronger rival ! 

He took her all the way home, and bade her good-bye, with all 
his heart in his eyes. When he went home his mind was in a 
tumult of plans and conjectures. As he entered his bleak vicar- 
age, the Preuginos looked particularly chilly and unpromising. It 
was all very monastic, but he did not feel at all monastic himself. 
He felt so little like that that he was angry at his ugly house. Till 
then, he hardly knew how much he had hoped for Mary, how un- 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


127 


consciously he had adorned his house in imagination with the idea 
of her presence. Now its big staircase looked bare and empty, and 
the tiled hall seemed to echo the sound of his footsteps more lonely 
than usual. He asked his man if any one had been there. Several 
messages were given him, and a card bearing Mr. Holden's name. 

“Has Mr. Holden been, then?” 

“Yes, sir; he is coming again later. Will you see him?” 

“Yes. I expect it’s something about that education affair. Show 
him into the study when he comes.” 

Mr. Holden’s visit was certainly about educational affairs, but It 
referred not so much to the education of the parish, as to that of 
its pastor. 

He arrived after the vicar had finished supper and was about 
to begin some writing that must be finished that night. An air of 
unspeakable tiresome expansiveness pervaded his manner, and 
he was so amazingly overfriendly that even Cartyn felt a vague 
suspicion steal over him. 

“Ha, vicar, how- are you?” he cried heartily. “Forgive a tire- 
some old bore of a fellow for bothering you at this time of night. 
Shan’t stay long. Well, how’s the parish?” 

As they had only just met at a vestry meeting, this question fell 
flat, as there was no news (tellable news) to tell. Mr. Holden’*^ 
manner was usually so soporifically dull that the spectacle of him, 
bursting with noisy geniality, was disconcerting, even ominous. 

“Did you want thost title-deed papers?” said Cartyn, referring 
to some of their mutual school business. “I was intending to send 
them around to you.” 

“Oh no, no. Oh well, yes. That’s partly what I came for.” 

‘And anything else I can do?” 

“Oh dear, no. In fact, vicar. I’m in a bit of bog, I tell you — 
fact is— have a cigar? Eh? No?— There’s some gossip going 
about this hole of a place; trust those kites of women to pounce 
on it. They’re making the most of it, too. I thought, as a friend, 
you’d not mind my just mentioning it, and for Heaven’s sake 
don’t get angry with me, for it isn’t my fault.” 

He fidgeted over the lighting of his cigar, and glanced uneasily 
up at Cartyn, whose face had, in spite of himself, gone graver. 
The vicar spoke. 

“There is always gossip in every community, Holden. I sup- 
pose it’s human nature ! But it’s something rather below that to 


128 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


repeat it, isn’t it? Something nearer, say, monkey nature.” 

“Oh, certainly, certainly — ^to pass it about and all that. But 
just as a sort of warning, eh? Oh, I don’t attach any importance 
to such rubbish, but I thought I ” 

“Oh, don’t. If it’s about me, my good friend, I shall survive, 
1 assure you. Come, tell me what you thought of Raike’s speech 
the other night? Wasn’t that a bumping meeting?’’ 

“Yes, yes. Grand. Stupendous. As you say — bumping. Bui 
this affair — I say, vicar, are you going to get married?” 

Cartyn’s face was a study. 

“I?” he said. Who said that?” 

“But you aren’t, then? Oh well, do forgive me; but that’s 
what they’re saying.” 

“Who?” 

“The women, bless ’em. You know their way !” 

“Well, you have my sanction to contradict the rumour em- 
phatically. That will stop it.” 

Holden looked dubiously at the blue smoke curling up from 
his cigar; he also looked very miserable, as miserable as a man 
always does look when sent by a woman to do her dirty work 
In that blue smoke the face of Mrs. Holden, wearing the expres- 
sion of the Cheshire cat with flinty, hard eyes, beamed deter- 
minedly upon him. So he stuck to his duty. 

“Why, no,” he said ruminatively, “I don’t think it will, you 
know. Because — oh, well, you parsons have to go to lots of places 
and see lots of folks, I know — but some of these ladies have 
seen you, or heard of you, visiting some one in the parish who 
you either ought or ought not to marry — blest if I can gather 
which they want ! Forgive me, vicar, there’s a dear good man ?” 

Poor Holden’s manifest discomfort at his impertinent task 
softened Cartyn’s ready wrath a little, though a vision of Mrs. 
Holden and her busybody set, her marriage-hunting daughters, 
her parochial worldliness, came to him too, and he, too, 
beheld a mirage of a Cheshire puss not at all flattering to that 
worthy woman. 

“The ladies are very kind,” he said, controlling his voice. “If 
I marry all the women I visit I shall have my work cut out.” 

“Oh well, you know, vicar, what they are ! Fact is, this one 
I believe, is a — well, a pretty one. That makes a lot of differ- 
ence. For my part, I like that sort. I remember the lady they 


A SHEPHED OF KENSINGTON 


129 


mean — we saw her in your vestry after church the other evening. 
I don’t blame you, goodness knows. Only, I’d got to repeat 
the matter, in case you did not know what they were saying.” 

“Well, it wouldn’t be so unheard of if I did get married, would 
it? Why warn me?” 

“Fact is,” said Mr. Holden, almost inaudibly and absolutely 
apoplectic in his discomfiture, “they’ve hit on some beastly tale 
about the poor lady. They say she’s — she’s not all square, or 
something. Something about India and a will. My wife got 
hold of some old friends of hers from Bahore and fished it all 
out — you recollect we’re Anglo-Indians ourselves? There’s proba- 
bly nothing in it, but you, as a young parson, ought to know quite 
what ” 

“I, as a parson, can take care of myself,” said Cartyn. “The 
lady in question unfortunately cannot do so. Sufficiently to say 
that I know her entire history, a very sad one, from other lips 
than her own, and it satisfies me. I say no more.” 

“Oh well, well, that’s all right, that’s all right ! I knew it would 
be,” said poor Holden, painfully relieved at having got through 
his errand so peaceably after all. “So, I’ll just silence the lot of 
’em — my lot of ’em. I’ll say you know your own business and 
the lady’s too. You see they turned her out of the Crafts Guild 
over this, but now I’ll tell ’em if they want to hear the rights ot 
anything, they’re to come to you themselves. Shall I?” 

“No,” said Cartyn sternly. 

“But won’t you stand up for the poor lady — just say a word in 
her defence?” 

“No. I can’t. I can’t explain.” 

“But, good heavens, a nice little woman like that being attacked 
by the others, and you ’ 

“It’s no good. I’ve said all I can.” Cartyn’s face was white 
and quiet. 

“Then, vicar. I’m awfully sorry, but I’m afraid those fussy 
tabbies will make her miserable,” said Holden. 

Cartyn rose up and turned away his face. 

“They must, Holden. My lips are sealed,” he said. 


CHAPTER XIII 


Lady Jiberene's drawing-room, or drawing-rooms, wore, in the 
month of August, something the appearance of a canvas sea on 
the stage, only in this case the leaping billows were of musty 
white calico sheeting, and, moreover, they did not leap. Every- 
thing was covered in sheets, the blinds were drawn, and the 
windows shut out the hot outside air, producing an odour of dust 
and mustiness singularly clogging to the spirits, but for that mat - 
ter, of course, no one was expected to go into these forsaken 
halls at all for at least two months, as their presiding genius and 
her family were out of town, visiting on the Continent and in 
Scotland. But the day Cartyn called, and very urgently in 
sisted on seeing her, she happened to be what is politely called 
a “ghost,” that is to say, she was in town, but you had to pre- 
tend you didn’t know she was. She had just rushed up for two 
days’ business, but if you met her in the street you were supposed 
to look straight through her, unless you wished to give offence. 
And on no account might you call. Cartyn, however, with mas 
culine scorn for these degrees of disembodiment, made a perfectly 
confident dash at her portal, and insisted on asking so many 
questions of the footman out of livery, whose face wanted a good 
wash, and who answered the third ring at the bell yawning, that 
at last he did manage to force his way into the echoing mansion, 
and was not at all crushed when he found himself shown into the 
canvas ocean drawing-room — not even the large salon, nor yet 
the next to that, but the smallest and meanest of all, where on 
fete days they bundled the shabbiest chairs and the imitation 
Blue Hungarian Band and the frumps — the very real frumps, col- 
lected by my lady’s philanthropy from sources undreamed of, and 
willing to sit round the walls and admire wfiat they really believed 
was London society. He waited fifteen minutes. Lady Jiberene 
did come in in the end, though he began to wonder if she ever 
meant to, and a rigidity of her plump, red face, and a certain 
tightness in her smile, informed him that she was not pleased at 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


131 


his intrusion on her ghosthood. But in his own eyes his errand 
v.’as too vital to allow these influences to distress him. He begaii 
at once, almost cutting short Lady Jiberene’s elaborate explana- 
tion of her oddly shrouded house, and told her that he had heard 
of Mrs. Fresne’s dismissal from the club, and would like to talk 
to her about it for a very few minutes. The tight smile became 
a sort of uncomfortable pinch, and Lady Jiberene’s eyes looked 
troubled and a little vindictive. 

“Oh, the trouble I have been put to over that most tiresome 
affair!” she said. “Are you really going to open up the subject 
again, Mr. Cartyn? I thought I had put it behind me for ever.” 

“I’m sorry,” he said: “but you have been so kind to Mrs. 
i'resne in the past that I thought you would perhaps tell me, as 
no one else could, why she was so summarily dismissed, and 
whether the committee would not be willing to retract their deci 
sion and ask her to return. I believe her work was satisfactory?” 

“Oh, perfectly. Oh, of course, it was not that. Really, Mr, 
Cartyn,” the poor ghost glanced worriedly round its calico ocean, 
“I have not time now to go into the ins and outs of the affair. 
But as a matter of fact I have resigned myself.” 

Cartyn reflected that there were evidently fewer “ins” than 
“outs.” 

“Oh, then I need not trouble you,” he said. “If your good in- 
fluence is removed from the club, Mrs. Fresne need hardly wish 
to return to it. But may I not ask,” he paused a moment 
“whether you will not continue to interest yourself further in 
Mrs. Fresne? She needs a woman friend very badly. I come, 
of course, entirely on my own responsibility, for I am interested 
in her — as a parishioner,” he added, a I'ttle guiltil3^ 

A harder look came into Lady Jiberene’s broad bucolic counten- 
ance, robbing it of even the traditional geniality that its ruddy 
cheeks and quickly moving blue eyes generally gained for it. 

“Women friends, Mr. Cartyn, are to be had in plenty by ah 
women who will be frank and candid about jthemselves. I have 
nothing to say personally against Mrs. Fr^'Sne, but I must say 
this — she is not candid.” 

“Will you be so, and tell me how she fails in this way?” he 
said. “In what way is she not candid?’’ 

“I don’t know how much she has told you. I don’t know upon 
what terms you and she arc. But you may have heard that there 


132 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


are two bitterly opposing factions at the club, and that I, as a 
social leader, I am told ! — who would have power, Mr, Cartyn — 
was placed at the head of one of these. A great trouble wa' 
made by the vulgar party of the opposite side about many trifling 
things; it came to a head recently, and Mrs. Fresne, as my nomi 
nee was attacked in my train, of course. A certain story — a 
very odd story — about India and a will, was, in fact, brought up 
against her by a clique which shall be nameless. Of course, I 
repudiated it and placed the matter before her myself, fully 
expecting her to answer, and at once clear the matter up. To 
my surprise, she would do nothing of the kind. She simpiy 
refused to speak. 1 tried every means in my power to make 
her, and asked her many and searching questions. I was, I may 
say, most tactful. But she would say nothing, so I could not 
silence the rumour, and the club voted against her. I could 
understand her reserve towards the committee ; they attacked 
her with unwarrantable rudeness. But to me she should have 
put things straight. I was her friend. I deserved to know it.” 

“But if the story, as you call it, was got up by a clique savagely 
determined on revenge, surely you could hardly take it seriously 
yourself?” 

Lady Jiberenc’s plump face flushed uncomfortably. 

“Clergymen, unfortunately, do not always see life as it is, ’ 
she retorted. “Life in the world, the great social world, is far 
more complicated than the Bible thinks.” 

“It is certainly coinplicated. I don’t think there is anything iii 
the Bible that states it to be otherwise. But surely in such a sea 
of confusion the only hope is in straight-steering,” half-consciously 
he glanced round at the calico billows rolling off desolately into 
grey space as he let fall the nautical phrase. 

“Oh, I see you are Mrs. Fresne’s partisan,” said Lady Jiberene. 
Partisan ! Again the foolish word, used as a reproach. Was 
their idea of the priestly office to be always a remote, aloof 
vagueness, giving its blessing alike on the just and on the unjust^ 
Whether for good or for evil, he reflected, he was a man with a 
man’s feelings. He could not turn himself into a pass'onless nega- 
tion in the name of his office. 

He looked back at Lady Jiberene with a hard look for look. 

“She has so few friends, it is perhaps her clergyman’s duty,” 
he answered, a sharply stern note in his voice showing his inner 


A SHEPHERD OE KENSINGTON 


133 


thought. The little philanthropist played with her watchchaip, 
looking confused and eager, and tears, real, wet, blinking tear.s^ 
came into her worried eyes. She was plainly torn by conflicting 
desires. 

"1 am willing to be the friend of all women,” she said. ”I 
count them all my dear sisters. Have not my influence and 
money been devoted to brightening dull lives, the helping of 
the helpless, the cause of suffering women for years. I have 
done my best for Mrs. Fresne — I took such an interest in her. 
1 quite brought her forward. She came to m 3 ' reunions. I 
introduced her to the Guild of Harmony. Lots of people at the 
club were willing to bow to her as my protege. Really, Mr. 
Cartyn, clergyman as you are, and naturally not so keen about 
the great progress of humanity for humanity’s sake as are we 
poor worldlings, you must admit that I have done much for that 
lady?” 

“Of course I do. That is why 1 appeal to you now.’’ But 
her brow contracted, in spite of the tears. 

“Very well. I will do what 1 can — if she will tell me her 
whole history from the beginning. I must, however, have frank- 
ness. It is only fair. To-morrow I am off to Wiesbaden, and 
in September we go to Scotland and a round of visits. When 
I come back — I will see.” 

He had to be satisfied with this, and the tears. But it was 
a grim satisfaction. 

She accompanied him to the hall door, her old, sweet, 
genial voice with its \'earning, motherly intonation having 
returned in full force after her late somewhat acrid tones, hold 
ing forth on our sweet service for our dear sisters in distres-^ 
most eloquently and touchingly. She said it was her Life Work. 

He went out again into the hot streets, equally wrathful 
with himself and with her. What an idiot he had been to call 
on such a woman hoping for a generous action ! Were they all 
shams,, he said? Yet Lady Jiberene was not a sham, in the 
opprobrious sense of meaning to be one, at any rate. She 
really believed in herself and her schemes for the benefit of 
womankind, so much so that if you didn’t believe in her too you 
made her cr}'. More than that what could one expect? 

But for Mary’s urgent trouble to wait the return from that 
round of visits! That was what roused him to wrath and ac- 


134 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


-tion that he was never to forget. He knew only too well the 
shortness of means she must suffer until she could get some 
fresh employment ; and the middle of summer, of all times in 
the industrial year, was the very worst moment for her to be 
seeking it. She had resisted his offers of advice with her old 
pride, and had told him she should take up her humble work 
of reporting, only too readily put aside for the club appoint- 
ment. Any turning of the conversation by himself into this 
really burning question of ways and means had almost madv* 
her lose her temper, and he had to go warily even with his sug- 
gestions for future employment. His attempt to offer assist- 
ance in the way of a loan had been met with actual indignation 
He dare not do more in that way. What he did must be 
done through others, and done quickly. 

After leaving Lady Jiberene’s he went to sec Mary. He 
had never once ventured to face the stern portals of the ginger 
rabbit since the day he had been rejected, remembering that 
the parish was lynx-eyed, even in these unfashionable quar- 
ters, and not wishing to bring any further talk about her head. 
It so happened that the people next door were humble church 
members, and their children, for ever on the front door steps, 
attended his Sunday-school. Remembering the perfect pas- 
.sion for gossip that is so charcteristic of the poor he had to 
be careful. 

She thought he looked white and thinner, his once boyish 
face harder in outline, and something lacking in his old almost 
jaunty air of abruptness. He said it was the heat, and gave, 
as excuse for his visit, an account, much softened, of Lady 
Jiberene’s words. 

“If you,” he said very low, avoiding her eyes, and playing 
abstractedly with the edge of some sewing she had been doing, 
“would have been frank with her, she said, she could have 
done much !" 

“Why do you expect it?” said Mary, her voice betraying a 
sudden heat. “She cannot expect me to give to her, and the 
whole club, a full account of my life, like a felon on trial O’* 
a probationer for a reformatory ! No, for all that she might 
offer I will never stoop to that. What could I say? Hasn’t 
everything been said that could be?” 

“No.” Cartyn thundered out the word with a suddenness 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


135 


that startled them both. “Mary,” he continued, getting up 
and going to her, lifting her two hands from the sewing, one 
with the thimble still on the small-tipped finger, “you could be 
cleared easily — easil 3 ^ We could do it. I could do it, td-night, 
any time.” 

“You?” She sat still on her chair gazing up at him, her 
hands still in his. Then, as his eyes burnt down into hers, 
aflame with their furious eagerness, a slow, unutterably sweet 
smile came over her patient, pale face, illuminating it and mak- 
ing it beautiful and girlish all at once. “Why, James, how 
could you do it?” 

She had never called him “James” before. The darling fact 
was like intoxication to his baffled, trouble love. For the 
moment he forgot his trust, his sacred guardianship, his 
“priestly honour” as he had once put it ; forgot all save the utter 
dearness of this gentle, injured thing, who, by the sacred con- 
fession of their mutual love, he must for ever count as a part 
of himself, looking up softly and calling him “James” like a 
wife. All his scruples, all his questionings, all his difficulties, 
seemed swept away by this sense of their nearness, their one- 
ness, under God — the sense that between the two who loved 
truly, woman and man, there should be no shadow of a secret. 

‘T could do it,” he said. “Suppose I know who wronged 
you? Suppose 1 had it from her own lips? I ” 

“Her? Her lips?” said Mary. Her face was white. 
“Whose? Who do you mean?” 

He was still gazing down into her eyes and holding her hands 
in a tight grip, but his own face was growing steadily whiter. 

“Can you guess ?” he began. 

“Guess ?” But what — what are you talking about ?” 

He began hurriedly. “Women come to us in their troubles. 
We have to hear tales of misery from both men and womeji. 

‘‘Confession?” said Mary, but she said it slowly and delib- 
erately and solemnly, as though thinking out the meaning of 
the term for herself, not hinting an accusation, as yet. “You 
mean confession ?” 

“They call it that sometimes.” His voice was low. 

“Yes. But isn’t it sacred? You can’t repeat?” 

'Tt — it is a matter of judgment, in this case,” he began. But 


136 


A SHEPHERD OF KEXSINGTOX 


something flashed suddenly into Mary's eyes. She stood up 
and taking her hands from his put one on each of his shoulders, 
tirmly and bravely, and stood away from him looking into his 
face. 

"God keep you true to yourself,” she said, very gently and 
with strange earnestness. 

He dropped his forehead forward on to her shoulder. "For 
give, forgive !" he said, 

"Not I," she said, and even a little ripple of her low, tender 
laugh shook her voice. "I am not the judge of laws to be 
broken for my sake ! Ah dear, go back, go back to your great 
work — and to yourself. You are God's flrst, then mine. Leave 
me, James, lest you speak. To-night, dear, we will pray.” 

And he left her, stumbling blindly down her shabby stair- 
case, dim with the hot summer gloaming, and out into hc’.' 
wretched street. He knew then what she was. , And des- 
perately and with bitter contempt he knew himself. 

But when he had gone, she stood up and let her sewing 
fall, bit by bit out of her hand. She was gazing straight out 
towards the narrow window, but she saw nothing of the grey 
street, bathed in the August sunshine, and the row of dingy 
houses opposite. 

She saw a bevy of faces away in India, gay faces, laughing 
faces, sneering faces, careless faces. She saw the face of a 
woman friend with furtive eyes, that met one’s own briefly and 
then shifted. They were heavily lidded, cunning, stupid eyes. 
They were Florence Courtman’s. 

She saw a series of pictures, rushing one after the other : a 
sick man, violent, moody, jealous, demented: a kind woman 
friend always in attendance, always making light of her services 
as a cheering visitor — only with those eyes. Strange, she 
had never noticed the shifting of those eyes before. 

To very innocent unsuspecting people, the true meaning of 
some significant act will only come long after its commission. 
Strange things, odd looks, odd happenings, now pieced them- 
selves together like the parts of a puzzle, a terrible inexorable 
puzzle. Bit by bit the little jagged corners fitted neatly, making 
a growing whole. Florence’s odd offer at Lady Jiberene’s. Her 
strange manner, her furtive, almost angry attempts to get her 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


137 


lo take money. Suddenly dropping her sewing entirely, and 
letting her thimble go rolling across the floor, she pushed im- 
pulsively into the next room and tore open the big box from 
whose depths she had brought forth the silver and black Indian 
embroidery. Tearing over its contents, the medley of quaint 
treasures with their delicate sandal- wood fragrance, she came to 
a carved box of yellowish ivory, which she brought out and 
hastily tried to open. For a few minutes she struggled, not 
understanding the turn of the stiff fastenings, then the thing 
fell suddenly open, disclosing two or three packets of letters 
untidy, yellow, and torn. 

The whole collection seemed to be a muddle of torn and dirty 
sheets, some with marks of liquid spilled on to them, like coffee 
stains, some only half covered with crooked, illegible writing. 
She shuddered and uttered some quick word of disgust as her 
fingers touched them to turn them over — her husband’s last 

few personal papers, the things he had clung to with frantic 
insistence in his last illness. They bore all the squalid insignia 
of the confirmed morphia maniac. The hurried, blotched, irreg- 
ular writing leading here, there, and everywhere ; now large, 
now small, now cramped and crooked, and now in jagged flour- 
ishes. She knew the whole thing so well. She had only 

glanced at these hideous scribblings once, hurriedl}^ in her early 
widowhood, and had then in an access of horror consigned them 

back to their box. She now picked up one of the dirty half- 

sheets; it was covered with semi-intelligible ravings in which 
her name appeared here and there. 

Evidently these were the few last dreary fragments of a self- 
destroyed mind, its last wretched attempts to collect written 
evidence of its own delusions. Some of the scribbles did 
not even include her name; one was a pet y rave against 
the “brutal” behaviour of the maniac’s own doctor, blotted, in- 
coherent, terrible. It broke off in the middle of a sentence. 
She was pushing the loathsome things back into their case, 
when a sheet of different handwriting caught her eye — clear, 
large, splashing, flamboyant — a woman's writing. 

She picked it up and examined it. It was evidently part 
of a letter that had been torn like the rest, probably in the mis- 
erable man’s ravings, and it began in the middle of a sentence 
but Mary read — 


138 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


“ true that she has gone too far with Vizier. Everybody 

IS talking about it. Dear friend, 1 do feel for you. That 
last affair of the gymkhana is now known. She and he did 

not arrive home till the small hours of the morning. She 

was driving with him alone. They called it an accident, but 

of course — well, we know what to believe. I have made full 
inquiries, but everything points to its being a deliberate case, a 
planned thing. Dear old Morrie, for the old days’ sake, I pity 
you from my heart ; but what can be done ? I can only advise 

you after this to put her out of your life, to ” 

The vile thing broke off here, the sheet being torn away. 

With mad hands, she tore over the rest of the rubbish, but there 
was nothing more there. This half-sheet was all that remained 
of the betrayal. It was undated, of course, and had no signa 
ture. But it did not need one. 

The writing was Florence Courtman’s. 

Then she knew what he meant. She knew at last who was 
her Judas. 


CHAPTER XIV 


"1 here’s something gone wrong with the vicar.” 

“What?” 

“I’m not liking the looks of him,” said the verger. 

“Why don’t he get married? The vicar of St. Ph’lup’s buried 
three wives before he was his age,” said the pew-cleaner. She 
pronounced St. Phillip “St. Ph’lup.” She had a dingy black 
dress to sweep in with the jet trimimng on the bodice, drab 
with dust. 

“Oh, I know all about that,” said Tolley. “And it ain’t never 
too late to begin having a gay time, is it? But you can’t always 
reckon on luck like that.” 

“The vicar of St. Ph’lup’s, let me tell you, was a fine, well- 
set-up gen’l email. Rather heavy to sit under, but wore lovely 
boots. Parliament, they do say, thought such a lot of him 
being so promiscous as a widower, as one might say, that they 
give him a canon-stall somewheres. I don’t know where he 
ran it, but he left St. Ph’lup’s.” 

“Oh, along of the cats’-meat stalls, no doubt,” said Tolley, 
with fine sarcasm. “Well, he deserved rewarding for killing 
off a few women.” 

“T don’t want none of your no-class sayings !” snapped the 
pew-cleaner, stopping suddenly in her business of sweeping out 
a pew, a casual occupation at best, that made far more sound 
of knocking on the wooden panels than obvious improvemeni 
in the dirt. 

Tolley shook his head impatiently. 

“Well, don’t talk so, then. I was saying there’s something 
wrong with the vicar. He’s not looking himself. Here’s 
the summer going, and he’s lost all his good spirits.” 

“It’s just want of a holiday,” said the pew-lady. 

“’Tain’t — it’s too many services,” said the verger dictatorially, 
glancing over her bent and fussy figure with a cold eye. “What 
for does a man want to get up before his natural time and go 


140 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


to church, that's what I want to know? We didn't have nearly 
so much churchgoing in my young days.” 

“That I can see,’’ said the pew-opener, resenting this contra- 
diction by raking about under ihe seat with much racket ; 
"you’re a warning to us what we might ’a been.” 

“You’ll be very clever if you ever come to what I am!” 
said the verger, with some sternness and heat ; “an honest man 
is none so common !” 

“Yes, I’ll certainly be clever — seeing I was born an honest 
woman,” said the lady, poking a grimed and red-nosed face 
in a stringy bonnet over the pew-top like a Jack-in-a-box. 

“I’m glad to hear that,” said tb.e V'.rger; “seeing to what 
you’ve come in your old age !’’ 

He shuffled away haughtily, but with celerity — menaced by the 
stringy bonnet and the angry head wagging indignantly over 
the pew-top. He caught murmurs of, “A pore ignorant fellow 
kep’ on charity,” but was clever enough to shut himself into 
the fastnesses of his vestry before he need really pretend to 
have heard, and so resent the sting. 

Rut th vicar, after his interview with Lady Jiberene and, fol- 
lowing it, his never-to-be-forgotten talk with Mary, gave him- 
self night and day to the ever-present longing — the longing that 
was gradually becoming an obsession — to do something for her, 
something to break this frightful chain of circumstances that 
had closed around her. One of the first things he did, after 
his self-abasement, was about the only thing he could do : he 
wrote to Florence Courtman. He had to write the letter twice 
over, fearing that the first too strongly betrayed his too human 
indignation. He told her all that had happened to Mary, the 
struggle and difficulty she was now in ; he even pleaded the fact 
that she looked ill, and described her dear troubles, as only, 
perhaps, a lover could describe them. That was the first letter, 
and that he tore up, because its final appeal for justice worked 
up into an accusatory note at the end, a note almost threaten- 
ing in its intensity. It was not a priest’s letter — it was a lover’s 
hot defence, appeal. 

Then he remembered that, as a confessor, he must not write 
such a letter ; he had not the right. All he could do was to 
appeal to her better nature, to urge again the infinite necessity 
for restoring happiness to the woman she had injured. But 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


141 


with his best endeavour this letter read sternly and coldly. He 
was not sure of her wdiereabouts — all her letters were forwarded 
to her from Darnley Gardens, but he guessed she would possibly 
be at Marienbad or thereabouts at this time, in the midst of 
gaiety and recreation. In imagination he could see the sunny 
boulevards, the gay terraces, the fluttering crowds ; hear the 
music, fed the light, cooling airs on his face; and then he would 
turn in thought to the little narrow court of Loder Street, the 
airless, streety atmosphere, the close, hot rooms, the noisy chil- 
dren, the ginger rabbit munching cynically at bits of jaded yel- 
low lettuce, and the pale girl flagging there in undeserved ad- 
versity. It was a maddening comparison. 

Sometimes, as the weeks went on, he felt a wild desire to 
make her marry him, and risk the consequences from which 
he had shrunk. Suppose he did, and people did say “things,” 
wasn't he perfectly capable of holding his own and braving 
it all out in his own way? Of course he was. 

And then came another difficulty — was it just to her? An 
unknown young widow, attractive, mysterious, living in a slum 
in his own parish, to be raised suddenly without warning to be 
head of the vicarage, put over all those ladies of wealth and 
position to whose efforts he owed so much — certainly it would 
cause talk. They were not all Mrs. Holdens — far from it — 
but they would naturally 'find his impulsive action astonishing 
and probably offensive. It would, done in such a clandestine 
way as would be almost a necessity, give real and deep offence 
in a parish so large and far-reaching as his, and its conse- 
quences might go on indeflnitcly creating harm and ill-feeling. 
And all this Mary would have to bear alone, for in such matters 
a man cannot really help a woman. Socially, she always stands 
alone, and must always face at least the drwing-room guns im- 
aged by her masculine host, whoever she may be ; and it takes 
some spirit to do this well, especially when those guns start 
booming with the coffee after dinner, before the men come with 
the bland platitudes on their lips, believing, or pretending to 
believe, that they are entering a nest of doves, and not a battle- 
held strewn with the slain and wounded. 

He gave up his holiday impulsively. He would not, at least, 
desert her in that hot, airless, parched London, at a moment 
when all her friends had done so. She was busy making brave 


142 


A SHEPHERD OE KENSINGTON 


plans lor the future, taking up her old literary work. He him- 
M'lf was daily hoping for Florence’s return. He wrote to Mary, 
after that interview when he had so nearly betrayed his penitent, 
a sad little letter asking her to at least attend sufficiently to her 
h.calth to take the only sort of change of air possible; to come 
and meet him for a walk in Kew Gardens. 

'[ he weather was so close, and the temptation to see him so 
.Prong, that she went. She said nothing at the moment of 
her discovery of the old letter, but a plan was growing slowly 
in her mind, and was adding a gravity and wistfulness to her 
eyes, that he thought due to their mutual trouble. She could 
keep a secret better than he could. But in the quaint old Geor- 
gian gardens she threw off her sadness, at least for the time, 
and began to chuckle in her old way with half-rueful fun. 
because she had just received an anonymous gift of money, a 
ive pound note, with which she seemed abnormally delighted, 
though goodness knows she needed it. 

“Anonvmous, did you say?’’ he had said, placing a hand on 
her shoulder affectionately, and looking over the missive with 

“Ye.‘: — no. oh no ! look, here is a slip of paper ! Oh, only 
tvn''written though, and unsigned. How disappointing!” 

He had picked it up and they read it together. Its curt le- 
gend ran — “From a Hoyden who likes fair play.” 

There w.-is no signature. A Hoyden I It was that which 
tilled Mary’s heart with jubilation. 

“How sweet of her — how dear !” she said. “I’m so glad, 
then, they've some of them remembered me kindly, after all I 
Wdio can it be ?” 

“Don’t you know the style?” 

“Style of typing?” 

“Oh dear, no — of self-expression. ‘Fair play’ — ‘fair play’! 
That’.s a mannish phrase. Do they all talk like that?” 

“T know!” said Mary, her eyes dancing; “it’s Muriel Hyde. 
Of course it is. That is one her special sayings. ‘Fair play.’' 
Of course; how utterly sweet of her, and oh. fancy it being 
thnt side to do me a kindness!” 

“What side?” 

“Why, she’s a Jacquesite,” said Mary, looking at him gravely. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENCINGTON 


143 


as gravely as if she had been saying, “she’s an Israelite." He 
laughed at her and with her. 

4 hat had been a little oasis in their journey of trouble that 
long and wearisome autumn, that flash of kindly generosity 
from a woman who Mary had never dreamed was a friend ; a 
little bit of unexpected cheer that made them merry for a 
time. But all the time there was growing, gradually but surely, 
a sense of certainty that she was doing him harm, was injuring 
and crippling his life, and, rapidly following it, her steady 
resolve to go away, for a time at least, and hide herself where 
he could not follow. She was possibly mistaken in this, but 
it was at least a generous mistake, and made amidst bitter tears 
and hours of struggle and longing, alone in her quiet room. 

She set about her little business of living again on the fifty 
pounds a year with restored enthusiasm. She lost no time iii 
calling on Mr. Calvin Hopper. That worthy litterateur, phil- 
osopher, and philanthropist, was kind, if busy and up to the eyes 
in some tremendous projects of his own for the good of man- 
kind, and so naturally a little difficult to enlist in the cause 
of an out-of-work and poor lady reporter. 

It was something rather to be wondered at that he gave htr 
a personal interview in his little den in Paternoster Row just 
then : the marvel was that, being so much more busy than 
usual, he did not consign her insignificant little interview to 
some lesser luminary in the crowded and dusty outer office. li 
was a hot August afternoon when she made the attempt to get 
another footing on this literary ladder; the sun blazed along 
the streets and made the Flolborn pavements like a fiery furnace, 
and the still heat carried out of the various restaurants heavy 
smells of dinner, so that even the dinnerless might believe they 
had dined. Mary went on a ’bus-top looking longingly as she 
lumbered past into the Holborn shops where linen frocks were 
displayed at ludicrously cheap prices for the benefit of lucky 
people going to the seaside; already the season was late and 
the hollands and cottons were deteriorating both in price ami 
freshness. But to her they were very desirable. 

Out of all the blaze and racket she turned into the narrow 
lanes and alleys round Paternoster Row and found herself in 
sudden shade, almost bewildering in its contrast, and made in 
a purblind fashion along the tiny pantomimic pavements, and 


144 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


little winding, twisting courts to tlie office of The World's 
'Friunpct. Mr. Plopper had invented, owned, and edited tw , 
journals, a large fat one containing a fearful amount ot ac- 
knowledged cuttings from other magazines, and whole slices 
out of biographies and novels in the name of “reviews” and 
a small thin journal called Broken Li'^hts, containing again clipped 
reprints from the other paper, like a servant dressed in her 
mistress's things cut down and patched. He had a great mis- 
sion to the world, and he accomplished this chiefly by siding 
with his country’s enemies on all occasions, supporting hotly 
all aspects of public movements that other people had not 
thought of, and violently declaiming against persons in authority, 
and all successful work. But he was good-natured and had 
he looked after his nails better might have been tolerable if 
you agreed carefully with all his wildest ravings. You must 
do that to be borne by him at all. His shoddy and underpaid 
clerks said he was just off to the Continent, to look into a 
serious European squabble which he had decided that onl\ 
he could settle; the clerks put it more discreetly, but that wa.s 
the gist of their information, offered to Mary in jerks in an 
overcrowded and impossibly stuffy little room, where everybody 
fell over everybody else and the stacks of dirty papers, and 
the poor typist’s shabby old machine. They knew Mary: she 
had reported for them before, and they recollected her gentle 
manner and unassuming ways ; and dirty and muddling as they 
were, poor souls, they instictively recognised genuine dignity, 
and rather liked it than otherwise. They had so much of the 
ether thing to deal with. 

Mr. Hopper was a large-faced, blank-looking man, who had 
so long ago gone in for a “fine head,” that apparently he had 
had no time to consider the chin part of it. He certainly 
had a splendid head of curly grey hair worn long, and a good 
flamboyant Roman profile, but what should have been a chin 
had duplicated itself into a great number of undulating rolls 
falling back unreservedly from the large full mouth and big 
teeth, into the neglige tie that the great man always affected. 
His collar had the appearance of catching up the receding folds 
and girding them just in time. 

He greeted Mary cheerfully. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


145 


Ah! Ha! Hah! Heh ! So! Well, and what do we want? 
Ah? What is it?” 

Mary briefly stated her errand and her hopes for more re- 
porting, Mr. Hopper was quite kind. 

“Certainly, of course, when we return, when we return, yes. 
But we go off to-morrow — you’ve heard — of course? — to settle 
this vast dispute amongst the peoples and the races of the world. 
A great mission, Mrs. Fresne, a mighty crusade! Oh, that 
my fellowmen would join hands in the mighty name of har- 
mony and all the world be one ! That is what we want — the 
brotherhood, the oneness of man ; no more cruelties, no more 
war, no more oppression, no more slavery, no more sweating, 
no more tyranny, but a great wide, immeasurable co-equal 
human oneness !” 

As Mr. Hopper waved and raved Mary wondered vaguely 
whether he was not beginning the practical realisation of his 
gospel by putting rive sorrow tul clerks in an office only big- 
enough for one. Physically the universal oneness of the poor 
men and the boy at the other side of the shabby red baize door 
was certainly marked when they all fell in a heap over the typist, 
but spiritually it was quite otherwise. 

‘‘The whole world, is accursed,” went on Mr. Hopper, bang- 
ing his table with a grey marble letter-weight like a tombstone, 
“by the greed of capitalists, by traditional wrongs, by hideous 
oppressions reared and fostered by our rotten social system. 
No man ought to have more than three hundred a year ! No 
man ! I would tear down from their high places these mon 
sters of capital wdio fatten on our hard-wrought earnings. i 
would make it a criminal offence to be a capitalist. i would 
show no mercy, I would consign to their just doom aii misera- 
ble caricatures of humanity who dare to use the accursed folly 
of a title ! A handle to their name, forsooth ! Look at me — 
do I need a title? Calvin Hopper, plain, honest Calvin Hop 
per: isn’t the name known all over the globe? Down with all 
titles but the honest name of a great and honest man. I am 
for a clearing out, a great reform. My aim is ultimate har- 
mony. Oh, that men would understand and be wise !” 

Mary reflected again that the harmony would have to be 
very ultimate indeed if you began it by treating all capitalists 
as criminals and putting the titled aristocracy in prison, bm 
again she kept wise silence. Mr. Hopper began again, ana 


146 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


raved on for several minutes. He considered he was giving 
Mary a gratuitous treat. He was known as a brilliant talker, 
and journalists said he "scintillated wit and wisdom”; naturally 
it would be an unbounded intellectual treat to this young aspirant 
to the ranks of letters to hear so much of his wisdom at first- 
hand. So he kindly expanded. 

Then, hearing St. Paul’s clock boom out the hour of four, 
and realising that Europe lay awaiting his inspired interven- 
tion, he came to business, less on Mary’s account than Europe’s 

"Well, so you say you’ve left your secretaryship? And you 
want to do some more scribbling as before?’’ 

“Yes, if I can. 1 had the pleasure of doing quite a large 
amount for you last spring.” 

"Yes, I recollect. You worked up all Lady Jiberenc’s chari- 
ties and philanthropic work amongst other things. 1 suppose 
you could do some more in that way?’’ 

Mary paused. “Yes, certainly that sort of thing. Unfor- 
tunately Lady Jiberene herself and 1 have — 1 have reason to 
feel less friendly with Lady Jiberene than before. People hav^‘ 
mad difficulties. I am very sorry myself ” 

Mr. Hopper interrupted excitedly — 

“Difficulties? Difficulties! With Lady Jiberene? i\Iy dear 
young friend, this sort of thing will not do at all ! 1 thought 
you and she were such great allies — that was why f found 
your work so useful. These people have power, infiuence ; they 
can always get an audience. You surely do not mean to tell 
me that you are beginning your literary career by quarrelling 
with the powerful? Sir Thomas Jiberene has enormous wealth, 
and his wife is such a well-knowm society philanthropist that 
they are bound to be a great acquisition to the cause. We can- 
not afford to lose such henchmen as these !’’ 

“But I thought you were going to put them in prison?’’ Mary 
thought, though she had more wit than to say it. She merely 
bowed and said, “I have not quarrelled with the lady you men 
tion. I only say that I have had difficulties through the mis- 
chief-making of others. But there are other fields of work 
that I might do for you, surely, besides her charitable schemes?” 

“Oh, there are others, yes, but there are also, my good lady, 
others to do them. Your intimacy with Lady Jiberene made 
your work of value to me — put us on an excellent footing with 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


147 


her. She has already done much for the cause. She is a dis- 
ciple of harmony — one of our best. (“They need them at the 
Hoyden,” thought poor Mary.) Unless you can see your 
way to getting ‘iiv with her again, I must, I fear, look twice 
at your offer. Those charming reunions she gives occasional!} 
to the leaders of the higher harmony are world-famous — I my- 
self have been the guest of the evening, the honoured guest in 
those splendid salons of hers. Ah, such meetings of brains 
and talent ! We hope for much more from her generosity and 
social influence before very long. However, when I return 
I will see what I can offer — I will see!” 

Mary rose, unable to resist a proud movement of her head at 
this tardy semi-promise, 

“I quite understand,” said she. 

Mr. Hopper seemed quite undisturbed by her look and tone. 

"Everything must wait,” he said, "till the return of the autumn. 
There is a great exodus from town — all going on our holidays, 
eh? Not I — I go, I fly to the service of my brother-man. But 
every one is rushing away, away to revel in the fair fields and 
sunny seas — ah, what a spectacle ! London emptying — London 
emptying. What a sight ! What a marvel ! Doubtless you 
go too; we all go, all of us, miraculously fired with that one 
grand human instinct — the return to Nature !” 

Mr. Hopper’s own return to nature, human nature, and a very 
ugly phase of it, had followed so rapidly on his mood of ex- 
alted prophethood that Mary felt chilled as she passed out from 
the Presence, and through the insanitary outer office, where tlv' 
principles of oneness was being d'^veloped by two clerks trying 
to use an uncomfortable single desk at the same time, and say- 
ing rather unnerving things to one another in consequence. She 
bade them all good-afternoon, and went home very sadly, a 
little wiser and more enlightened as to her old literary friend. 

She realised the truth of his words as she passed through 
the streets and studied the thinned crowds ; certainly every one 
was intent on holiday-making, and already the people in Oxford 
Street were beginning to show signs of being different to th" 
habitual frequenters of that thoroughfare. There was already 
a vague foreign look about many of them, or a country look, or 
a wandering, respectable nomad look that she recognised as an 
August sign. Even the milliners’ windows had taken on a 


148 


A SHEPMERD OF KENSINGTON 


different appearance, and the hats offered for sale were dis- 
tinguished by a certain frumpiness and excess of check ribbon 
and tartan ribbon and gauze veil, likely to appeal to the passing 
eye of young America visiting out of the season. 

Of course she could have no holiday. That was undreamed 
of. But suddenly it occurred to her that Cartyn would shortly 
be going for his ; of course he must — it must now be quite due. 
In a church like his no doubt the vicar took August for his 
vacation and possibly September too. Mcr heart sank at the 
thought. What a waste of weeks here in this hot, airless Lon 
don, without his inspiring presence ! Even when she did not 
see him there was always the fact, the consciousness of his pro- 
tecting friendship, and even that would be gone. She re- 
membered now that the deaconess had once told her that the 
vicar went “abroad” for his vacation, like IMr. Hopper, only 
not so professedly for his brother-man as for a change of scene. 

When she got home she found a note awaiting her asking 
her to repeat their walk of that other evening; she was to meet 
him at Kew Station and go into the gardens for an hour or so. 
She could have cried at the kind thought, but she laughed 
instead. What a respite ! Even if he were going away ther * 
was to be another meeting after all. 

But she knew this sort of thing could not go on. 

“T may do him as much harm by being seen about with him 
in this fashion, as by marrying him,” she said. “I must put 
an end to it all. It isn’t fair to either of us.” 

A bit of luck, so-called, in her own affairs, finalh^ decided her. 
There was a woman sub-editor of a small halfpenny journal, 
whom she had known in the old days of Mr. Calvin Hopper's 
patronage. To her she now applied with one or two small 
articles on matters of home interest. 

Mary’s rather dashing, impulsive fashion of writing and 
stringing her facts together told in her favour, and her literary 
friend was found not unwilling to take these contributions at 
the rate of a very few shillings each. But this gave her .1 
new determination and new hope. She would go away, she 
said, and work and work and perhaps some day, who knows?— 
earn a name for herself, a fresh, proud name as a writer that 
no one should dare to dispute. They were forlorn beginnings, 
but one never knows, of course. One thing was certain — she 


r\ SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


149 


must remove the burden of herself from Cartyn's shoulderS; 
the incubus of her misfortune from the least chance of harming 
his work or career. 

1 hey had many more of those walks, and then came one in 
late September which she knew only too well was to be their 
last ineeting, though he did not. They went to Kew, though 
the wind blew chill east up the river, and the leaves coming 
off the trees and rotting, sodden, in masses under their feet. 
They stood a long time on the tow path, and watched the 
early sunset flame red-gold and lurid, under a murky pall of 
drab mist behind the hard, flat bulk of Sion House. Mary, 
her own heart heavy and full, noticed with painful exactitude 
every detail of that scene, the river racing along, mud-coloured 
and angry in the looming light, the harsh rustle of the with- 
ered rushes on the opposite marshy shore, and across the fla.s 
that straightfaced, prison-like pile with the great lion at the 
top standing out black against the sky, with his abnormally 
long, straight, impossible tail. It was an evening big with 
fate, ominous with coming sorrow. When it was over they 
had come home saddened and silent, though still only one of 
them knew of the parting. At the station she lingered perhaps 
a moment longer when he held her hand for goodbye ; perhaps' 
her white face looked like an appeal to him under the flicker- 
ing station light as she turned it to his despairingly. At any 
rate, he suddenly stooped and kissed her, and his doing so 
seemed quite natural to them both, natural and sweet and sacred. 
And then they separated without a word. 

That evening, when a mist was closing in, and rather later 
than usual, she came in from her walk, her landlady, who ap'-* 
peared to be very busy shutting a window on the stairs that 
was never by any chance opened, said tentatively as she passed — 

“The vicar hasn’t had no holiday, Mrs. Fresne. People are 
wondering when he’ll go. 'I wonder why it is — don’t you? 
I said I’d ask you?” 

Mary looked back at her impudent questioner, taking in the 
whole picture of her frowsy hair, the peering shifty eyes, thr 
manner at once half-saucy and half-nervous, with a sudden 
revelation of the truth of her suspicions as to the parish “talk 
ing.” 

“People should ask the vicar themselves, Mrs. Hunt,” she 


150 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


said coldly. “How should I know about the future movement;^ 
of the clergy?’’ 

“Still ” began Airs. Hunt; but Alary’s glance silenced her, 

and she tramped away to her own regions. 

An hour later her lodger called her up to speak to her. A 
little tremblingly she went. Airs. Fresne’s eyes, even in th- 
dim light of the one oil lamp, looked red and swollen. 

“1 wanted to say that I shall not keep these rooms much lon- 
ger, Airs. Hunt,” she said. “1 have been very comfortable 
here — but I am going away.” 

“For a holiday, mim?’’ said the landlady. 

“ATs,” said Alary, very quaveringly, “for a holiday. A very, 
very long one.” 

Cartyn did not see her again. But when a letter to her 
received no answer, he called one day at Loder Street, risking 
parochial comment in the terrible fear that she was ill. Mrs. 
'Hunt gave him a sealed note. 

“She’s gone,” she said laconically. “1 was to hand you this 
sir.” 

“Gone?" His voice told his incredulous amazement. “Gone? 
Gone where?” 

“Don’t know, sir. Five days ago she went — left here for 
good,” said the woman. “I was to give you that. She left 
no address. I haven’t an idea where she’s gone. Well, she 
was a quiet, well-behaved sort of a young person, I zcill say 
though they do say as how she was a real lady in hiding. She’d 
(juieter ways than the real ladies I’ve seen myself — she ” 

“Airs. Fresne has left your rooms?” 

“Yes, sir, and ” 

But Cartyn had gone, torn off anywhere, away from the 
garrulous tongue and prying eyes. Gone? He tore open his 
letter as he strode along. Only a few words — very gentle and 
to the point. He was not to try to follow her. She was 
going away to work out a better, braver name for herself. She 
had got good literary work, and she meant to stick to that, and 
perhaps make a name at it — who knew ? She added : “Good - 
bye now, but we will hope not for ever. God is watching, and 
all may yet be well.” 

An enclosure fell out — the half of the letter she had found 
in the ivory box. She wrote: “I found this amongst some 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


151 


papers of my husband’s. T send it to you to show you that F 
know now who iny enemy was. We need say no more about 
it, except that I now fully understand your noble action. You 
could not have done otherwise.” He hardly glanced at the 
wretched fragment. Mary was gone. He had lost her! She 
was gone out of his reach away and away, to suffer by herself 
without him. “Oh, my darling!” he cried in his heart, in an 
anguish at the thought. He was like a man gone mad. He 
pushed on blindly now through the crowds hurrying along in 
the cold, foggy afternoon, trying to hit on one sane idea in all 
the rushing tumult of his thoughts, one reasonable plan of 
immediate action. She should not escape him so. Literary 
work? Mr. Hooper — the Hoydens? Some one there would 
surely know ! He would apply to them all and find her at 
whatever cost. He did not wait a second. He hailed a pass 
ing cab, and tore off to Paternoster Row, and the office of The 
World’s Tiirmpet. 

But The World’s Trumpet was not a world’s directory. It 
did not know any address of that lady save 8 Loder Street. 
No. The principle of universal oneness was again exemplified 
in Mr. Hopper’s clerks, who now at least were all united in 
staring open-mouthed and a little cynically at the curt-voiced, 
excited, white-faced clergyman. Mr. Hopper was not back 
in town yet. No, Europe had not yet been able to do without 
him. The sub-editor, or acting editor, might be asked. They 
tapped at the inner rabbit-hutch and a long face with a lon^ 
straight, light fringe, long moustaches, long pen in one ear, 
and large spectacles immediately appeared in the crack, as though 
the acting editor had been sitting with his nose nearly in it, 
as indeed, by the exigencies of his tiny space, he had. “A 
reporter? — Mrs. Fresne? No, never seen her since the sum- 
mer. Heard nothing of her. No, not writing for us.” Th<' 
dirty baize door flopped to again, and the grubby editorial 
vision, so briefly vouchsafed, was no more. 

Cartyn dashed back to the west and openly stormed the Hoy- 
den Club. He asked for Miss Hyde, but was informed she 
was away at present. He could not recollect any of the other 
names of those who had been her friends, and after the most 
searching inquiries got no satisfaction. The only address they' 
knew was Loder Street, as he half expected. 


152 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


In despair he came outside and stood on the kerb staring 
at the light splashed on the fog. He took out the letter, anc’ 
with it Florence’s condemnation. Then an idea seized him 
making him feel ridiculously angry with himself for not having 
thought of it before — Messrs. Tallard & Tallard, her lawyers. 
Suddenly, at the idea, his brain whirled, caught up and carried 
away in a vortex of mad suggestion, and he got into his cab 
again and drove to Whitehall. 

He was waited upon by the courteous clerk, and, upon his 
making certain statements written in pencil on a card and sealed 
in an envelope, promised an interview with the head of the 
firm. He got it. Half an hour later he emerged from those 
ominous portals. His face was white and drawn and set. He 
made his way homeward like a man dreaming. It never seemed 
to occur to him to ride. He walked the whole way from White 
hall to Kensington, through the muddy night streets, always with 
that mask-face and those hard eyes set on an innermost thought 
■of utter horror. 

Angels have fallen — and men? 


CHAPTER XV 


When Cartyn left the lawyer’s offices, he had no clear idea of 
his surroundings or his destination, and it never so much as 
occurred to him to take a cab or 'bus, though the evening was 
wretched and the crowds pushing. People wending their own 
way home from work or business on a 'sloppy November night 
are not over-punctilious about the exact degree with which they 
may jostle a brooding, white-faced, lost-looking parson who may 
chance to be going in their direction. Cartyn’s own pace was 
a rapid, eager stride, and he arrived home at his gloomy vic- 
arage overheated, dazed, and silenU 

He took up his letters in the hall mechanically, and asked his 
man if there were any messages in his usual fashion, and, re- 
ceiving these, flung himself as he was, wet overcoat and all, 
into his study and closed and locked the door. He sat there 
at his table with his head in his hands for a long time, so long 
that the man came knocking to announce that supper was ready, 
and then he recollected where he was, and the steam rising from 
his damp overcoat became for the first time apparent to his 
vague eyes. He got up at the man’s insistence and followed him 
indifferently into the dining-room, leaving the wet coat in the 
hall, but when he reached the meal he only stood still and stared 
at it as though trying to focus enough attention upon it to find 
out quite what it was. In this there may have been excuse, 
since even the vicarage cook could hardly have given a full 
account of the antecedents of the gravied hash she had put 
before her master, though certainly that was not his reason in 
contemplating it. Like so many bachelor meals, unless the 
bachelor is an old woman, this repast was not thrilling in its 
inviting capacities ; things that ought to have been watery were 
dry and things of a nature dry were too watery. The potatoes 
and the mustard and the hash had far too much water in 
them, but the water-jug was only half full, and the spinach and 
the salad were positively' arid and brittle. 1 here was also 


154 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


that other universal characteristic of such forlorn banquets' — 
a plethora of salt-cellars and dessertspoons, but an arid scarcity 
of tablespoons or anything to serve vegetables with. But thes" 
matters did not strike the master; perhaps he was too used to 
them. In any case he only gazed upon them abstractedly for 
a few seconds and then turned on his heel and strode back into 
his study, saying he did not want any supper ; he would have 
a pipe instead. He had to say something to shut the gaping 
mouth of his dismayed and offended servitor, who after arguing 
a little, proceeded with real dudgeon to find the ugly black 
ened thing his master smoked and the tobacco jar and the tray, 
and set them with deeply offended dignity on his writing-table. 

When he had gone Cartyn picked up these things and lighted 
his pipe in a perfectly instinctive fashion, and with his hands 
thrust deeply into his pockets paced to and fro about his room 
He never once raised his eyes from the ground, lost utterly in 
stern reverie. Hour after hour passed by, and still he tramped 
the room. 

He reached up to the shelf of an oak cupboard and rummaged 
about for a few moments in its rather untidy recesses, until he 
came across a loose handful of photographs tossed anyhow into 
a box, rather banal-looking things, of a lot of fatuous-faced lads 
in college gowns, or cricketing fiannels, or boating kit, with 
here and there amongst them the thin face of an eager-looking, 
ugly-looking for the most part — shyness has that effect on Eng- 
lishmen — that thin long-jawed face poked its characteristic way 
out pretty constantly, its rather shining determined eyes fixed 
uncompromisingly on the spectator, or, as would really be the 
case, on the photographer. 

“You’re dead,” he said, looking down at it, his pipe still stuck 
between his teeth. “You’ll never live again. You’re buried 
now, for all time. You had a job lot of utterly unworkable 
ideas about honour and heroism, if I remember rightly. You 
got some of ’em from Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome, and 
some from ’varsity tradition, and some were in your blood. 
You were going to convert the world. It was a nice, comfort- 
able straight-dealing sort of world, waiting to be converted. 
The only reason it hadn’t got well hitherto was because the 
very certain remedies of a very certain school of the church 
had not been properly applied till you came into it. When you 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


155 


had dipped into a little theology, seen life in a few vacations, 
raid the lower classes as collected together decorously for a 
Cr^^stal Palace Band of Hope fete, you saw your way to the 
conversion of England quite dearly. It really only needed a 
few quotations from the Fathers, didn’t it? And a little in 
spiriting controversy over degrees of church ornament, and the 
thing was practically done. Enemies, atheists ? — quote Sir Oli- 
ver Lodge and Professor Drummond and Newman (in his twen 
lies), and St. Augustine and the E.C.U. They would then be 
disposed of. Worldings ! — that awful, idiotic word ! — go neatly 
to the neighbouring landlord or Member of Parliament and tell 
them that their riches were dross and their glory a dream — 
(they would probably agree with you, especially the Member of 
Parliament) — and so the grasping, selfish, capitalist classes would 
fall to your bow or spear. Women? — Oh, preach down to them: 
speak thoughtfully and kindly on matters suited to their poorer 
intelligences, or exact strict obedience from creatures hardly 
capable of steady intellectual effort : that perhaps would serve 
one’s purpose better. Oh dear, yes, it was all going to be very 
simple. After ’varsity there was that rippingly fine curacy, 
when cold baths at five o’clock in the morning were an integral 
part of the mission to England: so was the constant and light- 
hearted missing of food, regarded as a discipline, and the rush- 
ing off madly to every possible meeting, service, ceremony, or 
imaginary duty connected with the great work. Then you divl 
sometimes get a sort of sense, didn’t you? of a dead-wall some- 
where rearing itself just when you were feeling most fervent: 
an impassioned exposition of the Athanasian Creed addressed 
to a Sunday-school on a hot afternoon, when the teachers were 
clearly criticising each others’ hats, and the children seemed 
to prefer surreptitious peppermints and kicking each others’ 
shins to anything fervid you had to offer? 1 hat blank wall oc- 
curred often— much oftener than the instant conversion of Mem- 
bers of Parliament, or the reduction of ladies of poor intellect 
to absolute obedience. It cropped up .so frequently that one 
had to think of a reason why it was there at all. Well, the 
reason soon came, a fine old reason that has stood the test of 
centuries of religious endeavour for men wi'hout count, — the 
fault of the insensate tlock : just that— if you won't listen to 
me you must be utterly beyond all remedy! That conviction 


156 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


brought great comfort. After all, there was a large part of 
the world entirely beyond remedy (if not listening to me counc'? 
as a definition, and it generally does), and you soon got used to 
the idea, didn’t you, and wrote off from your list of convertibles 
those who remained aloof to your propaganda. After a time 
the result was wonderful lightness of heart. Calling the just 
to repentance is, after all, a very pleasant and jog-trot thing, 
and with that you were most happily occupied for years. In the 
slums, coal-tickets brought them, and in the west, custom. And 
you yourself were always the head, always the light and the 
leader. Surely the conscience was most happy — entirely un- 
troubled? Far and away beyond the pale there were beings 
who lied and stole and fought and betrayed, but they hardly 
counted. If it was dreadfully heretical and wicked for a mem- 
ber of the flock to go and hear a preacher credited with lean^ 
ings towards the higher criticism, how could one concern one- 
self with sins of the magnitude of never coming to church at 
all, and playing bridge on Sundays? There really was not time. 

busy general practitioner, occupied by doctoring up exhausted 
nerves, has hardly time to fly to the battlefield and deal with 
shattered limbs. It may even not be his duty. So those bigger 
things were not your duty. The doctor might one day come 
in for a shattered limb himself, which would at least rouse his 
belief in mere accidents. You? — ah, you have got your shat- 
tered limb at last! You have fallen beyond the wildest crash of 
the higher criticism heretic! You have learned that failings 
must be reckoned with by your own utter failure !” 

He seized the last photograph — the thin-faced boy taken in a 
.surplice and deacon’s stole, his mortar-board cap still in his 
hand, and tore it in half, throwing the bits into the fire, and 
digging them into the coals with his boot-heel. When he did 
so, he looked exactly like the boy. 

“That’s the end of you,’’ he said, and tossing the other groups 
carelessly back into the cupboard he went back and resumed 
his pacing. 

He took Mary’s heartbroken little letter out of his pockci: 
again, and read it once more, though he knew it by heart al- 
ready, almost as though he had hoped to find a new meaning in 
it. But there was none, save the infinitely new meanings that 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


157 


love will always find in all things written or said by the beloved, 
beloved. 

Why had she gone? Why had she said nothing to him, hinted 
nothing about it? They had driven her away amongst them, he 
by his love and hesitancy as to whether it would be wise to fly 
in the face of all his petty clerical traditions and marry her' 
whether she would or not, the others by their hateful gossip 
and jealousy. He ran his boot with an angry kick against 
the table leg as he passed, at the thought which came to him, 
that if he could find her now she should marry him whatever 
the consequences. Was she for ever to fall between the claims 
of others’ expediency. Florence’s moral cowardice, even Mrs. 
Holden’s matchmaking designs — she had had to suffer for them 
all. 

Well, it had driven him to-day to despairing action. He hail 
to-day learnt the entire measure of his own weakness, and the 
effect was shattering to all his long-lived self-complacencies 
It was no idle fancy that made him throw his photograph of 
the sunny, complacent young deacon on to the fire ; the symbol- 
ism was as real to him in that dark, horrible moment as any ac: 
of his life had ever been. To-day — to-night — he deliberately 
detached himself from the high seat of his own self-esteem and 
came down to sit with the beggars and the outcasts of the 
world; henceforth to be a sinner amongst sinners, a perfectly 
hopeless human creature amongst his fellow-humans, not a dis- 
tant saint niched in his own prejudices, and looking down scorn 
fully upon sins whose profounder meanings he may never fathom. 
It is a great thing to be above the rest of creation, serene in 
your own inaccessibility. Nevertheless, the bubble that floats 
upon the surface of the stream may feel the same superiority to 
the busy minnows beneath, to the waving water-weeds, or the 
cobbled polished stones, things that are lower in point of situa- 
tion, but which have a far higher work to do than it. He 
made this simile to himself with a laugh of bitter self-contempt. 
It is a shattering thing to discover, after regarding yourself as 
exceedingly sensible for a long time, that you are after all 
frightfully conceited, especially when the incident that so opens 
your eyes is a crashing moral descent. But it may be your only 
chance of rising. 

When he had tired himself out utterly with walking about — he 


158 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


must have accomplished some miles of walking since that mem- 
orable interview at the lawyers — he sat down at last, wearied out, 
and leaned his chin upon his hands. His tired eyes rested on the 
triptysch that Florence had sent him, months ago, her peniten- 
tial offering that he had then regarded wnh such scorn. Th“ 
beautiful thing* caught the light from his lamp, and the red 
glow from his now fast-declining fire burned on the silver of 
the nails, and the small garnet blood-drops with which its real- 
ism w'as almost painfully completed. It no longer stirred in him 
that ancient feeling of wrathful pity, even though he at the mo- 
ment fully recalled the train of circumstances that had brought 
it into his possession, 

“Suppose,*’ he said, “it is superstitious, offered as a substitute 
for a just action, wasn’t it given in a pathetic yearning after a 
better idealism, which, blind enough, is better than indiffer- 
ence? Poor wretch, she didn’t know herself. But neither have 
I known myself. Look upon us,” he said, gazing reverently 
now at the drooping figure with those gleaming garnet drops ; 
“wdio know not what we do,” 

He paused a moment. “When that thing came,” he went on, 
“I recollect that I was indignant that a woman could be super- 
stitious enough to offer it while retaining a lie on her soul. 1 
prayed to know the root of the evil which made such a thing 
f)ossible. Now^ I’ve got my answ^er, 

“We and our hollow formalism — we inhuman, theoretical par- 
sons, with our little empty rules and notions, busy counting our 
anise and cummin, a little here and a little there, and forgetting 
the great tragedy of human experience ! 

“We physicians with an intricate collection of tabulated reme- 
dies — and no knowledge of the disease. Content for less than 
a phrase and a candle — for a university tradition or a parochial 
tenet — to leave unexplored the vastest mystery of God’s crea- 
tion, the human soul in daily working !” 

He violently pushed aside a heap of books scattered about on 
his table, serious-looking volumes — Sturt on The Parables, a 
work which when you opened it appeared to be composed main- 
ly of collections of Roman figures, strung together on chains of 
heavy comment; Clamp on The Catacombs ; Grudge on The 
Analysis of Controversy ; Wriggle on The Recapitulation of th'^ 
Rubrics; and a Bible that only opened at St. Paul. 


A SHEPHERD OE KENSINGTON 


159 


He sat staring into the gloom of his large partially lighted 
room, and he remained so for a very long time, so long that 
the sound of the hall cloek striking half-past eleven and rever- 
berating through the silent house now roused him at last from 
his long watch and travail. 

He turned with a sigh to his papers. There were certain 
things he must do that night, whatever sin or sorrow lay on 
his heart, certain letters to be answered, appointments to be 
made, business to settle. He had lost a whole afternoon and 
evening, and he laughed shortly as he recollected it because ii 
seemed to him that he had lost years — and he must make up 
for some of it before the last post went out. He turned to his 
heap of letters and sorted them out according to date. There 
was one from a man he knew or had known slightly, that cer 
tainly required some sort of an answer, for he had put it aside 
in a hopeless puzzle as to what to do respecting it at least two 
da3'S ago. The poor, weak wretch, an old college compeer, 
hardly so much as even a boyish friend, had entered the Church 
at the same time as Cartyn had done : they had been ordained 
b}'- the same bishop, and had got their respective “titles” at 
about the same time, Cartyn to the East End, this man to .! 
suburban church of some celebrity. Some years later he had 
got himself mixed up in some folly, partly through a certain 
flippancy of character never balanced by the advantages of 
trouble or difficulty, great baptisms which a ridiculously pros- 
perous home and parentage had unfortunately denied him. Car- 
tyn had heard something about it in the chance gossip that occa- 
sionally draws together men who have been at the same col- 
lege, but for years he had lost sight of this man and had for 
gotten his sordid little episode completely in the interest of hie 
own affairs. 

But here was a letter from him written from some desperate 
address in impossible wilds of north London ; a ruined man s 
letter, the last cry of a creature whose head is sinking under 
the billows of its own misery and the world’s vengeance. He 
told how his patrimony had gone long ago, this not through 
I' IS own fault, indeed, but lost through his parents’ unlucky 
speculations; how he was married to a young and delicate wife, 
and they had lost their little child; how, through the kindness 
of friends, he had managed to hnd a trifling secretarial post. 


160 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


after the exposure of his folly, and had managed on that easily 
enough until his money became absorbed in his famil3^’s general 
ruin. And how his work did not bring him in a living wage. 

What he wrote to ask was Cartyn’s recommendation, his 
moral support, in his bitterly serious attempt to return to his 
priestly and parochial duties. He had had almost an offer of a 
country curacy, and the bishop’s sanction to return to his old 
life but now that old tale of his past cropped up and cut him 
off ^rom hope at every turn. 

“My wife is ill, pining for the country air,” he wrote. “We 
are r-^duced to living in one room, for which we can barely pay ; 
this new chance may mean life to her. I would not approach 
you on a matter so personal but for her sake. I implore you, 
in her name, to help me to rise out of the despair my fault has 
brought me to.” 

In the morning that letter, thrilling, ghastly, horrible as much 
m what it did not say as in what it did, had presented confusing 
dihiculties to the man to whom it was written, because it seemed 
to bun that he was practically asked to give a false testimonial 
in ‘:^rder to do a kindness. His old acquaintance gave the name 
of the country vicar who was willing to take him on as his 
or.rate, and implored Cartyn to write to him on his behalf, say 
something, anything, to bring the possibility of that bare sub 
si'.tence, and that reviving country air nearer to him and his piti- 
ful little wife. It was a cry for mercy from a creature who 
had forfeited all claim to it by his own fault, and as such, in 
t:!ie clearer morning hours, Cartyn had sternly regarded it, feel- 
my that a horrible duty lay before him in having to refuse, or 
at best discourage the poor man’s claim. But now all was 
chaiiged. He recalled the “fault” to which his suppliant alluded. 
It amounted to little more than the scandalising of a pitifully 
nr.m and censorious neighbourhood by an episode rather foolish 
and self-destructive than anything intrinsically evil. What was 
it to his own fault? Good heavens! How the one suffered and 
the other got off scot-free 1 This poor semi-ruined man ap- 
pealing from his wretched lodgings to him, the powerful vicar 
of a celebrated church, a man with untold influence in his hands, 
and yet. as he said straightly to himself that night, the worse 
sinner of the two by far and far away. 

He set to work now to write the letter, showing his new mood 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


161 


it\ every turn of his sentences, every expression of sympathy 
and his desire to help. “I will come and see you,” he wrote, 
“to-morrow, and talk over what you propose. All being well. 
1 vdll not undertake to write, a testimonial to (he mentioned 
rlie country vicar) but will myself go down to Chadhurst to 
see him. I think that should put things on a better basis, and 
save any awkwardness. Pens and ink are tricky things when 
so much is at stake.” He sealed up the kindly note that was to 
bring almost delirious happiness to the hopeless creature who 
had appealed to him, and stamped it ready for post. 

“That must go to-night in any case,” he said. 

He could easily manage an hour or two to go down and see 
the vicar of Chadhurst. Personally he could plead his friend’s 
cause, he could tell the real story, plead so eloquently, that if 
the man had a human heart he would see the thing as he saw 
it, “though not quite,” he said grimly. “Not from the stand- 
point of one who might one day be in the same condemnation !” 

He wrote one or two other notes, one to the vicar in question, 
making an appointment, and then went out himself to post 
them. The pillar-box was a little way up the street, and he 
strode up towards it, relieved to get his lungs filled again with 
the fresher night air, that smokeless, still atmosphere thaf 
makes London streets so wonderfully invigorating and almost 
pleasant after eleven o’clock at night, when most of the ^i^res 
are out, and the real quality of the much abused city atmos- 
phere has a chance to assert itself. He put his letters in the 
pillar-box and turned to retrace his steps. Out of the deep 
shadows, cast by a row of immense houses he saw the figure 
of a policeman loom forward on silent, rubber-paded boots. He 
called out “good-night” to the man, who seemed disposed to 
stop for the luxury of a chat in the weary monotony of his night 
round, and to whom the vicar of St. Chad’s was a very familiar 
figure. Cartyn lingered a moment talking abstractedly of the 
weather and the chances for the morrow, and as he did so a 
figure passed, a thin, slinking, slouching form keeping in the 
shadow as closely as possible, and purposely crossing the street 
to avoid the eye of the policeman as far as was possible. 

“There’s a well-known customer,” said the constable, indicat- 
ing the poor wraith with a lordly jerk of his head. 

“Is he? In what way?” asked Cartyn. 


162 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


“All ways,” said the laconic official. “Tramps all over this 
beat and lots of others. Takes milk-cans, chiefly, and sometimes 
door handles and bell fittings. Oh, anything detachable, or 
anything in an area — from a pot o’ musk to a ten-guinea puppy 
dog. We’ve got to keep an eye on him. He’s all the more slip 
pery because — asking your pardon, mister — he’s a horn’d gen- 
tleman.” 

“A gentleman — that? Good heavens, how do you know?” 

“Oh, we’ve got his pedigree, don’t you make any mistake — 
all of it.” 

“But how did he get down to this?” 

“Oh, drink, mainly, I expect; but he began by cheating at 
cards. That’s how he began. He was turned out of his regi- 
ment for that — he was a horficer. I expect that gave him the 
start.” 

“Poor creature!” said Cartyn. He bade the man good-night, 
because just then he could not listen to any more. Cheating at 
cards 1 A moment’s obsession, a moment’s temptation, a mean 
fall, but a final one ! A mere matter of conventional dishonesty, 
the breaking of a code of rules framed by men who would them- 
selves recognise no obligation that a man should suffer for a 
wrong done to a woman — and yet this frightful, tragic doom I 

He had nearly reached his vicarage door, that correct ecclesias- 
tical emblem, when that overwhelming sense of fellow-feeling 
and pity made him turn suddenly on his heel and retrace his 
steps in the direction of the pillar-box. The policeman had al- 
ready sauntered on, and had disappeared down a side turning 
where he was busy flashing his lantern on to people’s windows 
and areas in search of negligence. Cartyn hurried along the 
way where he had seen the outcast go slinking — it was a long, 
straight road, and there under the flicker of occasional lamps 
he saw it still pursuing its dreary, aimless, stealthy way. He 
had almost to run to get within touch of it, so much terror had 
the mere sound of his pushing footsteps struck into the guilty 
creature, causing him to hurry even as he felt himself followed. 
But broken boots and hopeless rheumatism do not make for 
speed, and Cartyn caught up his prey and put a silver coin into 
his hand before he could altogether make his escape. The name- 
less thing hardly did more than grunt. 

“For Christ’s sake,” said Cartyn. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


163 


“Christ bless you,” said the spectre indistinctly. 

Cartyn stood with his hands thrust deep into his overcoat 
pockets, his hat rammed over his eyes, and watched the outcast 
lollop miserably away. 

“He has,” he said grimly. “I now know I’m a cad. That’s 
better than gibbering mock sanctity.” 


CHAPTER XVI 


“i DO think England,” said Mrs. Courtman, “is the most disgust- 
ing, impossible place on the globe.” 

The hot, stifling August and September were succeeded b}'^ a 
grey and misty October, heavy on the spirits with moist heat 
and treacherous evening “rokes” that made winding sheets over 
the all too early sunsets that now began to shorten the days, and 
Mrs. Courtman was trying to get braced up in a Scottish coun- 
try house. She usually spent all the forenoon that she was up 
and dressed by a charming log-fire in a cosy morning-room 
snarling over her letters, and great parts of the afternoon driv- 
ing in a closed brougham with two dogs ; but she was really 
angry that she was not braced, and had said so many nasty 
things to her hostess about the fraudulent quality of Scottish 
moorland air, that this scathing attack on England quite revived 
that Gaelic lady into sudden curiosity. 

“Well,” she replied, “it’s quite a change to hear you say so. 
But why?” Florence had at the moment just got to the letter 
stage. 

“Everybody is so shocked,” she said, angrily tossing aside a 
long and closely written missive. 

“Why, but we’ve got the name for that here,” said the other 
lady. “Didn’t you say so yourself? Many’s the time, my dear, 
that I’ve heard that.” 

“Oh yes, goodness knows you are,” said Florence. “Very 
shocked, you Scotch. But I must say you keep it for the kirk 
and the black kid gloves, and drop it more or less in between, 
which is nice of you, and gives you canny, kindly sort of faces 
that I like. But in England they are shocked in season and out 
of season. It pulls down their faces into solemn fiddles, as thougn 
they were always saying the word ‘shock’ very long and chant- 
ingly. Oh, just pull down your own nice, rosy, sonsie face and 
try it — there! — doesn’t that feel just like the average English 
matron on her good behaviour? I tell you hundreds of women 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


165 


are daily bunting for some thing or person to upset their notions 
of propriety. I really don’t think I’ll ever go back. Til sell 
Darnley Gardens, and live away somewhere in peace.” 

“Then wouldn’t they hunt ye out,” said her friend, “if they 
love it so ?” The quaint irresistible “ye” robbed the infer- 

ence of its sting. Florence laughed shortl3^ 

“They wouldn’t need,” she said. “They’ve got plenty to keep 
them occupied at home — the neighbour’s Louis heels, the maid’s 
fringe, the fact that you have (or haven’t) read a certain book, 
the planning out of somebody’s income that doesn’t go round 
and yet he won’t go bankrupt. I’ve often known people more 
shocked because you aren’t bankrupt than because you are. I 
suppose it is disappointing when one has settled it in one’'s 
mind. Well, as I was saying. I’ve had a wretched letter thi^ 
morning that brings back all these dreary things to my otherwise 
happy mind. I told you I’d been unlucky for ages, but I really 
did lose a lot of my bothers on that Algerian trip ; yet, look 
5''OU, directly I got back to the British Isles, I’m asked to settle 
a ladies’ club dispute! Here’s a letter from that old Lady 
Jiberene !” 

“Oh, I know her. She’s a great club woman, isn’t she?” 

“She is. Quarreling with all of them makes you tremendously 
celebrated. Look at this rigmarole going into every single de- 
tail of the wretched squabble — as if I cared! I’ve only been to 
the Hoydens once, just to please that tiresome old Harriet 
Jacques, and now I’m supposed to read through all this!” 

“But at what is she shocked?” 

“Oh, at all the other members.” 

“That’s generally a reason for remaining on a woman’s club 
list. I’ve heard. Some folks join for nothing else.” 

“Oh well, yes, it amuses them, no doubt. This woman belongs 
to two others ; the ‘smart’ kind, you know, where they admit 
they steal hairpins and bits of soap and plated forks; she stays 
on for the pure excitement of the thing. But this affair — the 
Hoydens — appears to have been too much even for her!” 

“But why does she write to you?” 

“Oh well, because I know the secretary — a woman I knew in 
India years ago.” Mrs. Courtman’s eyes flickered and fell, and 
she called suddenly to her dogs in a sharpened voice. 


166 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


“And has this body been doing anything, then?’’ said Mrs. 
Mackie, in her pretty treble brogue. 

“1 haven’t read. I won’t read it. 1 began, but it’s such a rave 
1 shan’t finish it.” She threw the letter into a little inlaid desk 
where she kept such loose papers, and turned the small golden 
key fiercely. “I wish these ambitious women wouldn’t run after 
me so patently. I’ve no interest at all in this Lady Jiberene. 
1 don’t think I shall answer it at all.” 

“Oh, think it over,” said the peaceful hostess, working away 
at her “woolies” with unruffled brow. “Some puir body may be 
.saved from trouble by a kind word from you.” 

But Florence refused to do anything at the moment but talk 
lilting nonsense to her dogs, and sweep over the morning papers, 
reading only the society “paragraphs” and running down, at in- 
tervals, every celebrity who had done, or was going to do any- 
thing at all. This she did as a mere matter of form ; many 
women so read the papers. 

Parties, marriages, births, deaths, called for exactly similar 
.strictures, made quite impartially and with a buoyant absence 
at once of accuracy, respect, or the least enmity. It was a 
mere formula. 

For several days she went about taking no further note of 
Lady Jiberene’s letter locked away in that untidy desk, and 
completely forgetting it. There were one or two other people 
staying at the Gordon Mackies, one an amateur aeronaut, mak 
ing experiments in ballooning, and whenever the mists lifted, 
inducing the reckless party to embark with him for short trips 
across a field or two. Into this new excitement, where you 
really stood a splendid chance of breaking your neck, unequalled 
even by racing motors or pyramid climbing, the lazy Florence 
had feverishly plunged, forsaking the log-fire and the shut 
brougham for the top of a windy hill and these dangers. Any- 
thing to be “in the swim,” anything to be more absurd and 
startling than other people. 

But one afternoon a week later when she was again lounging 
about doing nothing, the mists having made ballooning an im- 
possibility, Mrs. Mackie said in perfectly unruffled tones, “And 
pray what happened to that puir body who stole the soap?” 

“Stole the soap? Who stole — what soap?” said Mrs. Couri- 
man, staring at her not unnaturally. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


167 


“Why, at the ladies’ club. Wasn’t there some one who got 
into trouble with Lady Jiberene, you said? And didn’t you say 
it was soap? Or hairpins? Eh? Or forks?’’ 

“Nonsense,” said Florence. “Of course I didn’t! I don’t 
even know wdiat did happen.” She sent for the little desk and 
rummaged in it wildly, jerking out Lady Jiberene’s letter, and 
skimming over the first part with many a snort of contemptuous 
disgust. Then she got to the latter half, up to then unread. 

“Oh, they’ve dismissed her!” she said, sitting up suddenly, hc'* 
voice sharp and surprise. 

“What for?” 

“Til see. Yes, here. Oh, because some one — what? — son*'* 
one made some unpleasant charge about her past, and — oh, the 
idiots, the wretched lunatic things, with their wicked gossip and 
evil minds !” She threw down the letter, and flung a book she 
had been holding across the room with a clatter. 

“Go on,” said the Scottish lady; “and what did they do?” 

Florence, very red of face, picked up her letter again. There 
was Lady Jiberene’s full account, intensely complicated by end- 
less excuses, self-justifications, little platitudinal gushes, and 
some sweet moralising. But she concluded her letter by begging 
dear Mrs. Courtman, if she really was a friend of poor Mrs 
Fresne, to set the matter right if she could. “I cannot,” wrote 
Lady Jiberene, “get her back to the Hoydens in any case, but if 
I am really convinced of her innocence, I can enable her to get 
her living. Mr. Cartyn, the vicar of St. Chad’s, has been here 
about it. He seems to be deeply interested in Mrs. Fresne. I 
suppose her looks would always gain her the pity of men. He 
says the story is not true — he can prove it, and something must 
be done without delay.” 

Florence’s angry, flushed face had changed to a guilty white, 
and she sat and stared at the letter after she had read it as 
though in it lay her own condemnation. Into Lady Jiberene's 
prattling words she read another meaning. Mr. Cartyn had 
been there; he had said the story was not true — how much more 
had he said? How much more might he not say? To Florence 
the honour of others was as her own. Love would be an excuse 
for any dishonesty; had been in her own case, if by such a name 
she called her own jealousy. All along she had suspected Cartyn 
of caring for Mary, and now this letter of Lady Jiberene’s 


168 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


proved it; he must be bent on strong measures indeed if he would 
go to her about it. It only corroborated the letter she had not 
so long before received from him, and which was so far unan- 
swered. Even then she only saw the whole affair from her own 
point of view. How cruelly she had been treated, how heartless 
ihe vicar’s behaviour had been to her. How wronged she was. 

She caught Mrs. Mackie that evening after a long motor drive, 
half an 'hour before they need dress for dinner, and dragged her 
into her room. A huge fire was burning. “Do come in and 
talk,’’ she demanded hotly; “though you aren’t a bit sympathetic 
— brutally indifferent, like all happily married women — somehow 
you're decent to talk to, Elspeth. I can’t think why?” 

“Well, well, talk. That’s all you need d 9 . Ye needn’t think — 
that’s another story ;” 

Florence flung herself back on a great downy lounge before 
the fire. "You sarcastic old cat, with your smug — 1 mean, canny 
face ! There, sit down, do, and try not to look very patient. 
You think you know everything, because you’ve got a happy 
home, and one good man to love you, and children, and all that. 
Rut, ugh ! if you knew what I do about life — and men ! I know 
all their badness, if anybody does !” 

“Oh, I don’t envy ye ! It’s no the wrong side of any puir body 
that I want to see ! That’s no more knowledge than if a body- 
might see only the fogs and never the moon, and then be run- 
ning down the Creator for all His works !” 

“Don’t stroke that sealskin ! If you can’t be knitting you will 
be putting something straight — ‘natty,’ you call it. You think 
you are called upon to put buttons on creation ! I believe you’d 
like to put a fire-screen in front of the sun, and make the sea 
learn manners !” 

“Weel, weel. It seems I can’t teach this mon of yours man- 
ners, whoever he is.” 

“No, you can’t. He’s a parson.” 

The Scotch lady’s hands went up from the sealskin coat across 
her knee. “A parson?” 

“Yes, away in town.” 

“But you — and a parson ! Who’d believe it,” 

“I know it’s odd. They’re quite out of date nowadays. No- 
body dreams of marrying them.” 

“Ay, but some of them still get wives.” 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


169 


'‘Oh yes, in golf capes, with drab felt hats with one quill in 
them. But 1 was speaking of actual women, real women who 
live. People who know that there is a world outside the parish 
rooms, and coal-teas, and things.’’ 

“Weel, now, real devotion ” 

“Oh yes, yes, yes ! But why does it make your hair scrawny, 
and your nose polished, and what is there in drab that is so very 
pleasing to Heaven? I wish I knew. However, the man I mean 
isn’t married. He’s fickle and insincere and cruel. He has be- 
haved shockingly. But all men are the same !” 

“If that’s so why fash yourself then? Put them in their place, 
and have done with them.” 

“But how?” 

“Why, marry one. Then ye’ll never worry your head over ’em 
again. A man is nothing but a great bairn. And ye’ll be so 
busy seeing to the puir loon’s comforts that ye’ll leave his 
fooleries alone !” 

This philosophy opened Florence’s eyes. 

“Men’s comforts? Selfish wretches! Yes, that’s how we suf- 
fer ! We are sacrificed to them.” 

“Look here,” said Elspeth Mackic, folding the sealskin coat 
and laying it neatly on the end of the couch with several pats, 
“I’m just tired of professional suffering women. I never heard 
a woman who loved say she suffered yet, though maybe mony 
do. If you love — and give — there is no such thing as suffering, 
of the howling stage-tragedy kind. It is so sweet it keeps your 
lips shut. Men, indeed! When I hear a bonnie woman talking 
about the suffering sex, I just know she’s been playing tricks 
herself !” 

Florence wriggled on her cushions, and stared into the fire. 
She was not offended. Like many trifling women she liked to 
feel the presence of sincerity even when it told her these appal- 
ling home-truths, in this _^chatty, broguey voice. There was a 
vague consolation in it. 

Mrs. Mackie spoke again — 

“But did ye love the mon?” 

“Love? Oh well— oh, I fancied him. 1 liked him. I wanted 
him to admire me. That’s what they call love nowadays. He 
did admire me in a sort of way. Well, he accepted my presents.’' 

“Eh! Quite modern. Urn. Yes. There’s your trouble in a 


170 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


nutshell, my bonnie woman. If you give the man the presents 
he’ll never love you.” 

“But you said just now something about loving and giving.” 

“Ay, so I did. But I didn’t mean presents you could buy at a 
shop. No man loves for those.” 

“Oh, you meant money?” 

“No, no.” 

“Oneself?” 

“That, but not as you mean it. Not giving him at the altar 
just a big, fat, cross thing, to be bought a house for, and to be 
deemed smarter than the neighbours, and to have servants hired 
for it, and friends found for it. No, I meant giving up your 
will and your fads and your moods and your pet hysterias — 
every woman’s got those — and just being a jolly soul. Just lov- 
ing a great bairn of a man better than yourself.” 

Florence looked at her. “Nobody cares for those old-fash 
ioned ideas,” she said, but tentatively. 

“They haven’t got a date, my honey,” said the Scotchwoman 
placidly. “They were before the everlasting hills, and they’ll 
live when you and I are gone.” 

Right in the middle of this perplexity Florence received a let- 
ter from her old friend Colonel Graydon. It was an unex- 
pectedly charming letter, full of gracefully implied compliment, 
and asking whether he should meet her in Venice that winter 
at the villa of some mutual friends. It was one of those easy, 
cheery, subtly flattering letters that men will write to pretty 
women at any time or place, but the suggestion about Italy was 
so insistently put that she bridled a little. She felt suddenly 
important to somebody at least. Charlie Graydon and she had 
dangled about in a semi-flirting acquaintanceship for a long time. 
He was known by her woman acquaintances as her “friend.” 

But she had rather given up expecting more. Now her plans 
were decided for her. She would go. All these hateful, annoy 
ing things that she had had to put up with, she said, she would 
leave behind her. Jonah-like she imagined trouble to be local. 
Hers was naturalised in London, between St. Chad’s Church and 
the Hoyden Club. 

Mr. Cartyn had treated her and her advances abominably. 
He had gone straight over to the enemy, and fallen in love with 
it! Very well, she would turn again to a man who did admire 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


171 


her and appreciate, and leave all these horrid creatures and 
their affairs behind. The old story — my vanity is hurt: I will 
grind my heel on the world. 

So- two women far apart made plans to escape — one to injure 
him, and one to bless him. 


CHAPTER XVII 


‘‘Some one came here for you while you were away, Miss Hyde/’ 
said the new secretary at the Hoyden Club, the very lady with 
gold-rimmed glasses who had been Mary’s fellow-candidate. P 
was three weeks after Cartyn’s visit and the Hoyden in question 
had just returned. 

“Who?” said that ever-curt and boyish one. 

“He left his card — a clergyman. Here it is — the Rev. James 
Cartyn.” 

‘‘For me? I don’t knov/ him,” said Murid, taking the card. 
“Who on earth is he?” 

“He came to ask about Mrs. Fresne, who used to be here in 
my present post, I understand. She has gone away, and he 
wants her address.” 

“But I — why did he ask for me?” Miss Hyde was looking at 
the secretary hard, but her brown “outdoor” face was a deeper 
colour as she spoke. 

“Oh, he didn’t say. He said you had been a good friend to 
Mrs. Fresne, and that he had reason to believe she might write 
to you. If she did, would you favour him with her address.” 

“Oh, that’s all very well. Guess she won't write to me. Why 
should she? What’s happened to her?” 

“I can’t make out. Miss Hyde. But the clergyman seemed 
distressed on her account — very agitated. I gathered he feared 
she might be in want, though he didn’t say so, of course.” 

“In want !” Miss Hyde gave a long, low, steady whistle, beau- 
tifully executed, and very clear and sustained. Then, with an 
almost droll air of masculine abandon, recklessly overdone, she 
swaggered away to the smoking-room, her hands in her tweed 
skirt pockets, humming a tune. 

Later in the day she came across the sepulchral Miss Jacques, 
who was hard at work copying out some heraldic mottoes from 
a reference book in the library, with her short-sighted eyes al- 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


173 


most pressed on to the book. She peered np at Muriel and 
snorted in an unwelcoming fashion. 

But Muriel repeated the new secretary’s message in her off 
hand manner. 

“Poor beast !” she said, sitting on the arm of a chair. “I say, 
Harriet, in want ! D’you believe it ?” 

“Quite,” said Miss Jacques, primly and going on with her 
copying work and nose-rubbing in dusty books. “Entirely. I 
should say it was exceedingly likely.” 

“Great Scott !” said Miss Hyde. 

“Any protege of Lady Jiberene’s would be sure to come to 
that end,” went on Miss Jacques, in deep, unmoved tones. 
“First she talks about her duties to her less-favoured sisters; 
then she stuffs their heads with nonsense, ideas beyond their 
social station ; then, in a pique, she deserts them for some trifle 
— and there they are!” 

“But this girl wasn’t a bad sort. She didn’t get her head so 
stuffed, did she? Of course she was one of your gentle, fluffy 
women, made for the home and the hearth, and all that, and 
had a soapy way of talking. But she struck me as reasonable 
when one scolded her. And, by Jove, she bore her disgrace like 
a brick ! She wouldn’t say a word in her own defence. I did 
think that was — well, clinking!” 

“Yes, I recollect. No woman of decent self-respect would 
have answered Lady Jiberene’s impertinences, put as they were. 
Certainly not. Rather be guillotined. Of course one would. 
Well?” 

“Well,” said Miss Hyde, swinging a large brown boot medita- 
tively. “I’m going to make it my business to find that young 
woman, as this good parson says she’s lost.” 

“You’ll only get into trouble with Lady Jiberene if you inter- 
fere !” 

“Ho! Lady Jiberene? But she’s deserted her! Didn’t you 
know? She told Mrs. D’Arblay she found ‘many sad disappoint- 
ments in her female benevolent work’ the other day, and quoted 
this one as an instance.” Miss Hyde mimicked poor Lady 
Jiberene’s plaintively sweet accents with cruel accuracy. 

But Miss Jacques simply said, “A-h-h-h !” in a long, solemn, 
ponderous fashion, gazing back at her friend with tragic interest. 


174 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


She finished it up with “Um,” and returned to her heraldic nose- 
scraping, only adding in a portentous manner — 

“'1 hen, I am with you.” 

“To be fair to old Jiberene,” went on Miss Hyde, “I hear 
.she did write to Mrs. Courtman, asking her all about her poor 
young friend; but Mrs. Courtman never replied at all. That 
.“'Cttled the young friend.” 

“Horribly unjust, and bad form,” said Miss Jacques, “not to 
reply to a letter, and on such a matter as any one’s character. 
Oh well, manners died with George the Fourth.” 

“Yes, and morals came into fashion,” said Muriel cheerfully. 

She got up and sauntered away, having an appointment at her 
golf club, and Miss Jacques was left to her heraldry and her 
note-taking, now greatK interrupted by meditations on the horri- 
ble condition of modern manners. 

But during the next few weeks Miss Hyde went about the 
Strand and the city a good deal, calling at the offices of several 
newspapers, for one of which she wrote sparse sporting notes 
:n a heavy man’s hand, and at all of these casually inquired 
whether they had among their contributors or reporters a cer- 
tain Mrs. Fresne. She was unsuccessful in her attempts, though 
certainly not for want of courage and poking about. Amongst 
others she, too, tried the office of The World’s Trumpet in vain, 
and cut short one of Mr. Calvin Hopper’s most brilliant speeches 
on his humanitarian mission to Europe made especially for her 
benefit on the spur of the moment, by saying, “Thanks, awfully” 
in a loud baritone and turning on her heel in the middle of a 
fine rolling sentence. Mr, Hopper was left simply panting. 

December, wet and cold and foggy, came and went, and still 
this laconic Hoyden went burrowing about in odd offices foi 
female employment, and bureaus for ladies’ work, with a steady, 
stolid persistency that defied time or distance. Miss Jacques, 
too, without any warning, and under cover of some mystic re- 
marks about noblesse put an advertisement in the agony column 
of a paper, ever her own favourite feature in any journal, with 
supreme confidence that the lost lady would read the message 
and turn up. The lost lady might more easily have done that 
than understand it, for it was couched in initials and terms of a 
mystery so profound and entire that the reader would be clever 
indeed who should understand it. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


17.5 


Evidently Mary did not, for no voice came to Miss Jacques 
in answer to this enigmatical call into space. 

For she had succeeded painfully well in her escape so far. 
She had found another and smaller Loder Street beyond Water- 
loo Bridge, undignified even by a corner emporium for rabbits, 
and had taken up her abode there, sadly enough, but strong in 
the consciousness that she was doing a just thing, if a cruel one. 
Women’s ideas of self-sacrifice are often terribly sweeping in 
practical working. Certainly Mary’s offering of herself upon th*- 
altar of her lover’s good fame necessitated his being burned as a 
victim along with her, which fact would cast a puzzling doubt 
upon its entire usefulness. Sometimes that doubt bothered her 
too, in the silent watches of those nights when people turned 
out of neighbouring public-houses did not scream and sing too 
loudly to permit of consecutive thought. Sometimes they did 
and she was glad in the small hours of the morning when even 
they went to sleep, to take her own rest and give up thinking 
and thinking till her head ached. 

She went on struggling with her writing and reporting, mak- 
ing a living after a fashion — the kind of living that only women, 
beings who can live on weak tea and chalky eggs and stale 
buns, would quite dignify by the name, but glad of one sma.l 
blessing in her self exile, namely, that rent was less in this 
southern Loder Street than in the more stately West End. 

Sometimes on finer Sundays, when she was not too tired, she 
went to the Abbey or St. Paul’s. Churchtime and the ringing 
of familiar bells always got more horribly on her nerves than all 
the struggles of her week; she felt so wild then to throw caution 
to the winds and to go once more to St. Chad's and see him 
hear him, be with him, even from a lonely distance. She sahl 
then, that she could so easily hide in the crowd by going at 
night and sitting right at the back, more especially if she wore a 
thick veil and kept behind some pillar. She had to argue al: 
over again to herself every Sunday, particularly on clear nights 
when the sound of bells came clashing and clanging over the 
holiday city, the bells of the Strand churches carried and mel- 
lowed by the river in between, and sometimes the far call of 
the Abbey. She used to think herself noble indeed, when, having 
sometimes on those winter Sunday evenings reached the Abbey 
with its black bulk looming up before her, glorified by the effect 


176 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


of stained windows lighted from within, its huge doorways busy 
with entering people, she yet could resist the counter attraction 
of empty ’buses rattling along Victoria Street in that most dear 
direction. It would be so easy to jump into one of these an l 
find oneself in a short time put down into the very midst of those 
beloved scenes. Sometimes Sunday ’bus conductors must have 
thought her a horrible nuisance, as, prayer-book in hand, she 
half-turned from the Abbey gates to glance over her shoulder 
in answer to their reiterated, business blandishments. Some- 
times her eyes, then, looked unutterably yearning, a yearning quite 
unwarranted by the appearance of the stuffy blue vehicle she 
gazed upon so fondly, so sordid and vulgar a rival to the vast 
Abbey, yet, to her, a fairy prince’s chariot capable of carrying 
one to entire earthly happiness. 

She took a church newspaper of a kind likely to give her 
trifling information about London churches and clergy, always 
in the hope that his name might appear there. One day it did, 
in connection with some Midland convocation or gathering of 
churchmen shortly to be held, a mere unit in a long list, but to 
her the only really important name in the whole spring, though 
it led off with Ihree famous bishops. It even appeared to be 
written in larger letters. She noted the date and that he must 
be away for at least three days to attend the series of meetings 
and discussions, as he was to be one of the speakers. When 
the time arrived, she went out one weekday evening and really 
did yield to the invitations of the ’bus conductors going in that 
magnetic direction, and entered one of their vehicles. He was 
away, she said to herself, safe in the heart of the Midlands and 
busy with his public work. She would be quite safe in creeping 
back once again to those familiar places and satisfying the long- 
ings of her lonely heart by looking again at the outside of his 
beautiful church, his house, his belongings, and wdth almost 
equal reverence on the squalid joys of Loder Street. It was a 
dark November evening, drizzly and hot, by no means inspiring, 
and after she left the ’bus and struck through side streets into 
the familiar neighbourhood, Mary felt an uncomfortable sensa- 
tion of guilt, though she had a perfect right to her depressing 
little night pilgrimage. She slipped along rather quickly and 
shyly, really afraid if people looked at her, not so much because 
she thought there would be any in those evening crowds of ab- 


I 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


177 


sorbed persons who recognised her, but because, like most per* 
sons on a sentimental journey, she imagined that every one she 
met knew her errand. Ah, how still and dark and tall his church 
looked, looming out of the semi-mist, semi-drizzle. There was 
a faint light showing from the stained windows — dare she go in? 
Oh, only for a moment. She did so, pulling down her veil, and 
slipping into a back pew behind a pillar. Tolley and his satellites 
were busy somewhere about the huge place ; she could not see 
them in the gloom, but distant clankings of feet and shuttings of 
doors told her of their presence. It was only three weeks since 
she had left, but already it seemed like years, and she wanted 
wildly to go and hunt out old Tolley, and feel the stimulus of 
the acrid-friendly greeting that she knew would be accorded her 
if she did anything so rash and silly. Tolley had always rather 
taken her under his Geneva wing, though she had never been 
known to yield a single tip, a record in Tollinian annals. 

After half an hour she rose and slipped out, just as Tolley's 
crab-like form appeared from the far vestry door carrying the 
immemorial wax-taper with intent to light up for an evening 
service, and went away into the dark night, making direct for 
Loder Street. And now she had come to the real purpose of 
her pilgrimage. Pulling down her veil still closer, though this 
was quite unnecessary, she entered the corner-shop, the bird- 
fanciers, with quick steps, and asked to look at tame rabbits, 
in rather a breathless voice. The wet evening had caused these 
creatures to be brought into the sawdusty warmth of the shop, 
and the man led her to a row of cages, along which she ran an 
eager eye. But, yes ! — there he was, the ginger rabbit, still eating 
his stale lettuces and glancing out at her with a sublime mixture 
of toleration and scorn. She asked his price, and though it was 
a heavy one for her, including the cost of a cage, she had scraped 
it up and she paid it. She asked a few questions about his feed- 
ing and wants, and came away carrying his heavy cage half- 
shrouded with sacking, and took a homeward bus, happily empty, 
upon which was a conductor with marked tastes in zoology, who 
made no difficulty about the little beast’s transit. On the con- 
trary, the conductor got painfully friendly and not only fed the' 
creature with biscuits from his own pocket, but wanted to know 
where Mary lived. 

From these advances she eventually escaped with her animal, 


178 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


laughing at herself for her folly, yet glad she had even this 
furry companion, and so gained her little home, where the land- 
lady had received due information about the new lodger, and 
where he met with quite a welcome. 

Whether she stayed at home to write, or came in after a whole 
day about her paper offices and small reportings, the tawny, 
fluffy, grave-faced thing welcomed her with its moist brown vel- 
vet eyes turned up to hers, and its long, soft ears cocked at her 
approach or slightest word. To her it stood for the living type 
of those brief but glorious days when she and Cartyn had met 
in her little home, those days of jonquils in Benares bowls, of 
Kew walks and entire happiness. 

So, in her dark obscure lodging, or between that and tlv-' 
crowded Strand, the Strand that is so awful and rushing a place 
to one helpless unit that it has no use for, she plodded along in 
her self-inflicted exile with quiet unconscious heroism, stuck to 
her daily battle and her daily meed of loneliness with a persever- 
ance and “grit” of which no one, who saw her delicate face 
shimmer out of the bulging crowds like a faint pearly fresco ap- 
pearing suddenly on a wall of station advertisements, would have 
deemed her capable. 

And all the time the hard-faced Hoyden was scouring those 
regions in search of her, and yet they did not meet. For Muriel 
Hyde, go-ahead, unflinching soul as she was, only searched her 
own Strand, not Mary’s, which will fully explain the dilemma, 
for there are in a sense almost as many Strands as there are 
planets. Certainly, the one the Hoyden knew was in its way 
connected with literature, but only with that literature which 
deals cheerfully on heavily glazed “lead” paper, with puppy 
dogs, their antecedents, their owners, and their owners’ houses, 
and sometimes, quite incidentally, their owners’ husbands and chil- 
dren : also with sports and photographs of games necessitating 
the ladies wearing terrible costumes, especially boots — splay- 
shaped and studded with huge nails, and swinging hockey sticks, 
or “putting” with flying hair and flapping belts. For these, and 
their kindred. Miss Hyde wrote, as has been said, and with this 
view of literature alone was she concerned : she could really 
hardly conceive of any other. So she badgered the inmates of 
the smart up-to-date offices of these papers with her quest of 
“trekking” Mary, but never so much as thought of applying to 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


179 


tlie smaller femininities in the journalistic world, where, high 
up in little rooms at the very tops of buildings devoted to bigger 
periodicals, were brought forth weekly the modest snippings of 
these, dressed up prettily, in a gossipy manner, and sold to good 
home ladies who never so much as dreamed of keeping show 
kennels and getting photographed for it. Had she done so, she 
would certainly have managed to tumble across Mary one of 
those days, for that was quite her present world, but what, to 
her, were the mysteries of home dressmaking fully explained 
with diagrams? Why should people she would have said, want 
to hear how to give a tea-party, or how to make table centres, 
or what the great world of Society was doing, or could do if ii 
tried : want to read paragraphs explaining how a certain pretty 
young duchess might have been a violinist, or could have been 
an artist, or could have rivalled Milton if she hadn’t had so 
many parties to go to. 

The manly lady wrote to Mr. Cartyn, after hearing that he 
had called to see her, explaining with characteristic curtness 
that she did not know of the whereabouts of Mrs. Fresne, but 
would make every possible inquiry, and should she hear would 
let him know, unless he had already come across her. 

He wrote and thanked her in a letter whose fervent tone, 
though unconscious, rather revealed his secret to Muriel, who 
had never thought of that explanation before. 

“Well, I declare!” she said to herself, “if it isn’t some sort 
of a love affair! I can just see that young woman married to a 
parson, and presiding at coal-clubs and blanket-teas — no, soup- 
teas, or whatever they are. Well, this makes it more sporting, 
certainly. Hallo! I’ve got an idea!” She stopped, right at the 
corner of Charing Cross, her hands stuck into her skirt side- 
pockets openly ruminating. “I'll go and sec old Jiberene. I 
don’t suppose she knows her whercabciUs, but she could tell me 
what papers she writes for.” 

She leapt into a passing motor-omnibus without a .second’s 
further thought, and dashed to Hyde Park without the least com 
punction, though Lady Jiberene was certainly at the momen. 
one of her most implacable foes. She got off a*" Hyde Park 
Corner and went swinging along Park Lane towards the northern 
side, utterly inconsequent and indifferent as to what Lady Ji' 


180 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


bercne would think, say, or do, and whether she would even as 
much as admit her. 

Arrived at Sussex Place, she was shown in by the footman, 
who was fairly used to oddities in the course of his lady’s wide 
charitable schemes, and who shunted her indifferently into a 
small room at the back of the house along a passage continuing 
from the hall, a room not unlike the waiting chamber at the 
dentist’s. He assumed, without question, that she was either 
socialistic or C.O.S. if she wasn't even lower in the visitor'.- 
degree. 

Lady Jiberene was heard bidding "good-bye” warmly and ef 
fusively to some friends coming down the stairs, and then al- 
most immediately bustled into the little passage sanctum and in- 
stantly froze. Froze red, rigid, grim, stiff, and stared through 
Muriel at a window overlooking a backyard with blackened 
laurels in pots, and awaited her explanation. 

Muriel, never slow, sketched her request so jauntily that Lady 
Jiberene gasped at her coolness. 

“I have no recollection,” she said, addressing the yard laurels, 
"of any newspapers for which that lady reported, beyond The 
IV Grid’s T rumpet.” 

She was nearly crying. It was awful to be torn between a 
righteous desire to snub this impertinent, irrepressible new 
woman, standing like a great boy before her, and yet to live up 
to her reputation of my lady of charity. She would have liked 
immensely to give out a passionate, pettish outcry against Mary 
and her ingratitude, but she simply daren’t if she wished to 
retain her reputation for motherly sweetness, for she knew 
that Muriel Hyde was lynx-e3^ed for inconsistencies and shams, 
and perfectly pitiless in her manner of exposing these to a heart 
less world. 

“Thanks,” said Muriel loftily ; “then I won’t trouble you. 
Only, as you probably know, she’s lost — gone away. We can’t 
find her. I’m on a hunt. That’s why I came.” 

Lady Jiberene’s face flushed even more — was there no end to 
Mary’s partisans? Through her, and the fatal letter she had 
written about her to Mrs. Courtman, she reckoned that she had 
lost that lady’s illuminating friendship. At any rate, she had 
received no reply. It was another score against Mary. Mr. 
Cartyn had gone too. No longer, she found, would he attend 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


181 


the Guild of Harmony soirees, though held in full splendour on 
the site of the calico ocean, now restored to its ancient glory', 
and this year beguiled by a Hungarian band with tassels on its 
boots. She put it all down to Mary. 

“I cannot, henceforth,” she said, “be considered an authority 
on that young person’s movements. She has other supporters. 
I would refer you to I\Ir. Cartyn, the vicar of St. Chad’s, South 
Kensington.’’ 

“Oh, I have heard from him.” 

“May I ask when?” 

“Oh, he called a few weeks ago.” 

“I saw him myself yesterday,” said Jady Jiberene. “And 1, 
like you, expressed a hope that she — that lady — was doing well 
as he came to me about her last summer. He replied very 
shortly that her future was now his own affair. By which I 
gathered he meant to marry her.” 

“He can’t if he’s lost her !” said Muriel. 

Lady Jiberene bowed coldly. 

“He must mean something,” said Muriel. “Perhaps she’s como 
into some money ?” 

“I understood that she originally lost her fortune through 
her own fault,” said Lady Jiberene, unable to resist the little 
dig. 

“Then that’s it !” cried Muriel. "You bet he’s found some 
way of getting it back for her. Fished up the whole truth and 
put it right. That’s it ! Good-bye — sorr\' to have troubled you 
The man’s a trump ! He’s iound a way out of it !” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


A FLOCK of veiled girls, all in fluffy white — fair-haired, black- 
haired, brown-haired — in the mellow sepia shadows of the big 
church doors. A faint frou-frou of feet, light like flower petals, 
a rustle of fresh garments, a passing dream of blossom-faces 
soft, excited, devout. Boys with big red ears caught into tran- 
sparencies by the early spring sun, recently timid, but now grown 
impertinent and splashing in at the gaudy stained windows, col- 
ouring all things purple and gold and red, and lighting up thos ’ 
poor self-conscious ears unkindly. 

The verger with a black and silver staff and a bristle of hair 
and several fussing and official persons in various black garment-, 
fidgeting in the porch shadows awaiting the bishop. A scent of 
lavender water, and russia leather, and new oak was over the 
whole. 

Mr. Cartyn, whose thin, brown face looked the thinner for 
his stiff, narrow cassock, came down an aisle and spoke to Bro 
ther Anselm, who, attired in something between an overcoat and 
a dressing-gown, flew round in great excitement. It was a black 
garment with “jockey” sleeves, and had a sash. The wearer 
required shaving. 

“How many candidates have you?” said Cartyn. “Did you 
give me your cards?” 

“I brought five,” said Brother Anselm. “Four girls and a 
man. The man is a converted barrister.” 

Cartyn glanced over at the men’s side instinctively. He had 
heard before of the converted barrister, and now a head, highly 
fledged with fawn fluff, with one ferocious and one shut eye 
reared above a pew-top was indicated as that gentleman’s. It 
looked a little like a moth-eaten Jack-in-the-box. 

Cartyn took the cards gravely. 

“Do you often get men coming forward for confirmation?” he 
said. 

“Oh, not infrequently. No. The Church makes many vie- 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


183 


torics even in this hardened, worldly age. This man drifted 
into our Churchman’s Club in the first instance, quoting Huv 
ley and Holyoake and Bradlaugh. He now genuflects of hu 
own accord, and wears a metal badge on his watch-chain.” 

‘T suppose you count him a great triumph?” 

‘‘Well, I should, but he borrows money.” 

Just then the vicar turned aside at a small commotion going 
on in the aisle, by reason of two militant ladies desiring to push 
themselves into the seats roped off for candidates. Tolley was 
arguing with them in a stage-whisper, and shaking his blacK 
stick threateningly. 

“Miss Limpole and Miss Yearsley!” said Brother Anselm. 
“They cannot find a seat.” 

“There are plenty here at the back quite unoccupied. 

“Oh yes, but they always desire to sit near the front. They 
are amongst the most faithful — they have never yet missed a 
service at which I was present. I say it, I hope, without vanity.” 

Cartyn thought the hope a safe one. The two ladies were 
obviously calculated to inspire that passion. Fiercely excited, 
and expostulating in heaving whispers, they clung rigidly to the 
red cord that barred them from the front seats. Miss Ursula 
Limpole wore a semi-uniform costume of rusty black, a cross 
between that of a nun and a nurse, combining the severity of 
both these dresses without the neatness of cither, with the result 
that she looked like an eccentric widow, except that no one 
perhaps, would have suspected any man of marrying her. She 
had eager, light eyes set obliquely like a Chinese, and a pinched 
mouth, and was tall and thin and brick-red in colour. Miss Zoe 
Yearsley was much shorter and very sallow, and wore drab, 
unrelieved, unmitigated. Her chin was held so very much poked 
forward that it seemed as if the jawbone had started out of its 
place with the effort, and showed most unpleasantly through 
the skin, like a lesson on anatomy. She had heavy eyelids and 
wispy hair done in a tight walnut at the back of a round hard 
head like a cricket ball. Her drab felt hat, severe and “artistic” 
combined, continually jibbed over to one side or another. A? 
she moved in strange jerks after long pauses, as lizards do, the 
hat became a perfect see-saw. 

But these ladies were determined to out-argue Tolley, and 
Cartyn was beginning to feel constrained to make some sugge:- 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


18^1 


tion, when Tolley’s quicker wit came to the rescue. Holding 
tightly on to his red rope, he pointed to Brother Anselm — 

“There’s your own clergyman. Go and ask him about church 
law !” he said. 

Immediately they dew towards Anselm greeting him, chins 
first, with great eagerness. 

By this time, although a weekday, the church was nearly full, 
even at the back, with friends and parents of the candidates, 
and the vicar slipped past their group into the vestry to receive 
the bishop. Brother Anselm was obliged to follow, and after a 
second or two’s delay, persuaded his two followers to be conteni 
to seat themselves in one of the only available pews at the west 
end. Tolley, snorting with secret delight, hurried also into the 
vestry, waving his broken-ended taper like a flag of victory. 
But the triumph was shortlived. When the clergy and choir, in 
procession with the bishop, had se/.ted themselves for the open- 
ing address there, under the shadow of the lectern, in full view 
of the whole church, side by side on hassocks and craning earn- 
estly forward, sat Miss Limpole and Miss Yearsley! 

They had run round the back into the aisle directly Tolley 
had turned, and had darted under the red cord with this royal 
result. They looked, with their chins poked forward in contem 
plation, like a couple of barges in the Medway, with both pointed 
sails leaning to against the sky. And though they were a spec 
tacle at once for choir and congregation, they remained unmoved. 
Gog and Magog could not have looked more perfectly confident 
of their right of place in the Guildhall. And there they remained 
in glory. Speechless Tolley gazed at the ceiling for the rest of 
the office, as though searching disgustedly for flies. 

When it was all over Brother Anselm elected to walk back 
with Cartyn. He said, “You are not looking well.” 

“Don’t your friends expect you, though?” said the vicar, madly 
anxious for escape. 

“Those ladies? No, indeed. It is not my rule to be seen in 
the street with the fair sex.” 

“The what?” said Cartyn. He could not resist it. 

“We avoid women.” 

“It must be difficult, sometimes,” replied the vicar, remember- 
ing the ruse of this morning. He was wretchedly ill and worried, 
and wanted to avoid his erratic companion. Just now the pres- 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


185 


•ence of this mild crank, with his unworkable notions, and clap- 
trap eccleiasticisms, had a really irritating effect. He must have 
-showed it 

“Are you not well, brother?” 

“Oh no — yes. 1 can’t say, quite. I’m hipped. Fm going for 
^ long walk. Shall we part here?” 

“I will depart when you wish. But I only came with you. 
brother, because I feel that you are in some trouble of mind 
and I hoped to be of some use. I would wish to be.” 

Cartyn listened irritably and looked almost with ang«r at the 
riabby-white face, the fantastic get-up of the creature at his side 
But something in the dreamer’s grey-blue eyes, something human, 
shot out and stayed his temper. Was it pity? He had never 
seen Anselm look human before and he was touched. 

“I have had a good deal of worry lately,” he replied more 
gently. “For one thing I’m beginning to find out — oh well, 
that a lot of our methods as ministers, shepherds, what you will, 
are all wrong. You may not agree with me, but I am convinced 
of it.” 

The brief gleam of human kindness flickered out of the other 
man’s eyles. Concerned, fierce, outraged they gazed at the 
speaker. 

“But, my brother, the Church cannot err! You do not ven 
ture to question her doctrines? You ” 

"‘^My dear man. I’m thinking more of conduct than doctrines. 
The time has come for the clergy to show doctrines in practice, 
rather than in discussion ! Do you know I sometimes think that 
while we churchmen are discussing doctrines the real work thaf 
Christ left to do is being done by the men outside, in silence? 
By the doctors in the hospitals, and the struggling chaps who do 
all sorts of unnamed social services, and make decent laws. By 
fair-minded women, and all the simple unaffected creatures who 
just know how to get along by the law of love. I don’t attack 
the Church, God knows ! I attack the teachers, who obscure her 
by formalism, by platitudes, by inanities, by prayers, mumbled 
into incoherence, or turned into flippancy by sing-song mono- 
tones. Criminally indifferent, calling anything stupid and didac 
tic orthodox ! More ignorant of the real world of men and 
women and their real hopes and thoughts, than a dead beetle 
in a collection would be !” 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSIXGTOK 


me 

“My good friend, you are beside yourself.” 

“Perhaps I am. But I attack what I know. The descriptio i 
is of myself — a few months ago. There are hundreds like it. 
Fancy expecting an intoning machine, with a few automatic 
phrases — one cannot call them ideas ! — turne'd out from the ’var 
sity at twenty-three to meet the great tide of sins and follies of 
the London of to-day ! And fancy expecting the same machine 
to comprehend the immense heroism and beauty of that same 
world ! Do you know,” he turned his thin brown face with its 
curiously half-shut eyes and looked at Anselm straightly, “we 
are some of us driven to learn our A B C as pastors from the 
least and meanest of our flock.” 

Anselm shook an agitated head. He recollected Miss Limpole 
on church law, a subject upon which she was constantly askin-f 
his advice, with eager chin and eye. He had always been the 
teacher himself. Miss Limpole would listen for hours. 

“I cannot agree,” he cried. “I learn nothing from mine, I 
devoutly hope. Good as many women are they cannot teach.” 

Cartyn, preoccupied in his own thought, went on ,“One can 
learn it from a sinner.” 

“Good gracious !” 

“From a woman.” 

“My dear, good friend.” 

“From a woman-sinner.” 

Brother Anselm nearly crossed himself. 

“Learn what?” he said, with rolling eye. 

“The only thing that makes the ministry of any use — love, ' 
said Cartyn. 

“Love? Love? Good friend, what terrible, what frightful 
ideas! Love learnt from — did you say women? Really, this is 
very appalling. Now, I myself encourage our good sisters in 
the work: are they not to have their due part in the work, in 
their place? Are they not of use to clean brasses and address 
envelopes, and so on? But to be taught love by them? Impos- 
sible 1” 

Cartyn, remembering Miss Limpole’s bonnet, agreed readily. 
He shook his head half whimsically. 

“Well, well, I suppose I mean one learns by one’s failures,’’ 
he said. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 187 

'•But, my brother, only the Church can teach. She is all- 
sufficient.” 

Yes, it was to the Jews while love was being born in a stable,” 
said Cartyn quietly, adding, “love is still born in stables, in. 
failures, in despair.” His tone was heavy and sorrowful. 

Brother Anselm glanced at him wonderingly and shook his 
head. A gently worried head, a gently worried heart, containing 
far more of the human love it belittled than it could ever be 
aware of this side of its judgment. He was really sorry for Car- 
tyn. Herein he contradicted himself most charmingly. 

Just at that moment two figures loomed across their path — 
a bat-like black figure and a drab figure. Brother Anselm started 
in terror. 

“Well, brother, I will say good-bye, and I shall have you in 
my thoughts,” he added kindly, and nodding, as he fled across 
the road and on to a ’bus just about to start in his own home- 
ward direction. After him, across the road, darted two deter- 
mined figures. At bay, he turned round, raised his “flop” hat 
and bowed coldly. It was the cut direct, and they knew his rules 
about the “fair sex.” The ’bus started off with a flourish, but 
before it had gone three paces, it was hailed madly, capture J 
and boarded ; and the last vision Cartyn had was of the brother 
looking worried on the front seat by the driver, and just behind 
him in adoring contemplation of his back, the black pseudo uni- 
form bonnet of IMiss Limpole, and the drab felt hat of Miss 
Yearsley, by this time at an angle altogether indescribable. So 
this was “keeping them in their place !" Shaking himself free of 
the whole thing with a half laugh, Cartyn pushed off towards 
the Green Park. He simply wanted a walk, and he chose a park 
that did not remind him of the past. The afternoon had faded 
into grey now, and the buildings, tall and uneven, ghostly over 
the vague distance, looked like the image of a dream citadel, 
seen across a vast Siberia of vague terrors and desolation. He 
hardly saw all these things, because his mind was absorbed, as 
had now become entirely his habit, in the everlasting question 
called up by the utter upheaving of his life since that never- 
forgotten day in Lent, and as he walked, his eyes were kept 
almost on the ground, as though he sought there the answer to 
his unhappy riddle. To many types of mind there was, could be. 
no riddle at all involved in such a train of circumstances; the 


m 


A SHEPMERD OF KENSINGTOX" 


thing would be simple enough from one point of view or an- 
other — either the highest or the lowest. But in his defence it 
must be remembered that he had practically never had a moral 
difficulty of his own to deal with in all his busy, eager, triumph 
ant career until this one had come and struck him, and broughi 
him low. The long habit of believing that moral strength can 
be bought by the tin badges of devout societies, and the accurat'^ 
formulae of some particular party in the Church had not reared 
him in spiritual muscularity, and now that a simple matter of 
right and wrong had faced him, all these props had fallen away, 
and he stood, as he was, before himself. And he himself was 
the bitterest of judges. It was hard indeed, after all those year.s 
of success, to see now of what he was really made, to discover 
the exact material of which his fine, daring, militant Christian 
character was really composed; wool, where he believed it iron; 
passion, where he had dreamed of a will of cold steel. 

“Poor Anselm,” he said to himself; “so good, so genuine, so 
self-denying. Dressed up like a scarecrow, but giving every 
farthing he has away to the poor creatures who hang about him 
for what they can get ! With his mean vicarage turned into a 
sort of untidy monastery, minus rules ; and his mean income 
shared with every cadger who will play up to his notions of 
ritual. There’s a man with a grand heart, but rendered practical- 
ly incapable of doing anything in the world because he prefers 
to understand church rites rather than humanity ! That is whac 
I might have become, was becoming, if I had not stumbled across 
a woman’s sin, and equalled it by my own ! Only I was never 
as great as Anselm. He has, at least, always lived for others 
however stupidly and blindly. I lived only for my petty clerical 
reputation ! There’s no fear of my doing that again !” 

He glanced over at the towers of Westminster fading ghost 
like on an oyster-coloured haze of sky. 

“To be one with London !” he said. “One with the faults and 
miseries of it, after all ! Not a little plaister demi-god in a 
parish niche, but a shepherd who at least lives with his sheep, 
and feels with them, fights the same things with them ! It Is 
almost worth losing what I have lost. And good God, what I 
have lost.” 

All through that winter he worked as he had never done be 
fore. The New Year dawned, and the slow, cold early months 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


189 


trailed themselves along in wet and fog and wind, and still h- 
struggled with an almost desp^'rate zeal. Furiously he used to' 
say to himself tnat because he had failed m the big things of life, 
he would start and do little ones well, and undoubtedly he did 
them so well that he never gave himself any rest or peace, any 

time to think or brood till utter physical exhaustion made him ■ 

setic his bed at night and sleep through his haunting trouble 

He proved himself, at that time, to be the friend of the poor in 

a way he had never done in the old days. Mr. Calvin Hopper 
might have learnt more than fine platform phrases of a sounding 
character on the subject of the brotherhood of man, if he had 
happened to slip down into some of the wretched streets where 
the vicar daily visited; but like most professional brothers of 
men that humanitarian was ill acquainted with such neighbour- 
hoods. A mission to Europe would naturally preclude you from 
visiting the next-door neighbour in grief and sickness; those 
great world-stirring things rarely allow time for little common, 
courtesies or sympathies. Such things belong to the unimagina 
tive followers of the Teacher who went about from village to 
village “doing good,” not to professional reformers. 

Sometimes it was talked about. One wet, windy night after 
one of the Lenten services, as the people streamed out, two men 
discussed it. 

“I never heard the vicar preach like that before,” said one of 
the churchwardens to Mr. Holden. 

“Didn’t you? Well, no. Not so serious, perhaps. But he’s 
always a good preacher, eh ?” 

“Oh, good. It was something more than that. It was extra 
ordinary, a sort of appeal, wasn’t it? It seemed to me to be 
almost personal in a fashion. You’d think he had something on 
his mind — he just gave that sort of impression. It was beyond 
me. That talk about a man giving up himself, his best hopes, 
ideals even, for the sake of another, seems a bit theatrical — 
the way he put it. I have never known him so vehement.” 

“No, well, perhaps not,” said Holden. “You haven’t time to 
go to so many services as I do, but I can tell you he’s beginning 
to talk like that pretty often now. There’s some change come 
over him. Every one says so. He’s quite silent outside church, 
can’t get a word with hirn, or a cigar, or anything; but in it — 
great Jupiter! He seems as if his tongue had been unloosed, 


190 


SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


cut somehow, and as if he was simply blazing to tell us all some- 
thing that he has gone through himself. He’s made a tremend- 
ous stir. Can’t think what it is. He seems altered, aged, some- 
how. He was a boy, comparatively, a year ago — now he’s grow- 
ing into something like a genius.” 

“He doesn’t seem to enjoy it, then,” said the other church 
warden. “Genius takes it out of you, I suppose. He’s looking 
horribly ill and worn out, like a man on the verge of a bad ill- 
ness. Couldn’t you get him to see a doctor?” 

Mr. Holden scratched his grey head unhappily. 

“My wife tried,” he replied a little ruefully. “She takes a 
sort of motherly interest in him, you know.” 

“Well, I believe she does,” said the other, making,, a wry 
grimace in the dark, and^ adding “mother-in-lawly” to himself. 

“But he wouldn’t even discuss it,” went on the puzzled Hol- 
den, lurching his heavy figure as he walked and shaking his big 
head in perplexity. “She says he was so ill-tempered that she 
was sure that was a woman in it.” 

“The ladies know their own influence so well !" 

“She says there’s alw'ays a woman behind it, when a man gets 
preoccupied and rather rude.” 

“Probably.” 

“But it’s never the right woman.” 

“There isn't such a thing — on the feminine horizon,” said the 
other. 

“Well, no, that’s true.” Mr. Holden glanced furtively round 
as though to be sure no one could by any chance hear him 
Then he whispered with volcanic earnestness — 

“Considering they’re ministering angels, the ladies do a lot o*^ 
scratching, don’t they?” 

But if the churchwardens found the vicar’s change puzzling 
the verger was equally perturbed, but more definite in coming 
to the point. He caught him now, as he was about to leave the 
church. He stood guard over the vestry door, looking more like 
a Muscovy duck than ever with his red flaming face and fringe 
of grey whiskers, and little beady eyes. 

“Sir,” he said, with far more respect in his tone than he was 
accustomed to use, as he fumbled feverishly with his waxen taper, 
turning it round and round in some distress of mind. “Aren'^ 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 19- 

3 ’oii goin’ to obey the doctor’s orders and go away for. a bit 
soon?” 

Cartyn turned in amazement. “Why, Tolley? What makes 
you ask?” 

“I ask,” said Tolley, still fingering the wax, “because if you 
don’t go away for a bit, j^ou’ll go away altogether.” The tone, 
was impetuously angry. 

The vicar glanced more keenly at the old man’s face and saw 
that it was twisted into funny knots and turns, and that there 
was a humidness about his hard old eyes not usually seen there. 

“Altogether?’’ he said. 

“Yes. Altogether— up yonder,” he said, pointing up at the 
vestry ceiling with a jerk of the taper, and obviously trying to 
control his voice. “You look ill. You’re worn out. You’re all 
goin’ to nothing. You’re’’ — he paused and looked solemnly at 
Cartyn — “you’re getting old !” 

The vicar laughed shortly and sadly. “I thought that was what 
you wanted, Tolley. You’ve always accused me and the bishop 
of being ‘boys.’ If I get old in your eyes I shall be old indeed.” 

“Age,” said Tolley, “is for them as had had experience. I’m 
old because I’ve seen a lot of life, and a good bit of the useless- 
ness of some of it. But you — ^you haven’t lived yet. You mustn't 
get old, sir. It’s too soon, when you haven’t lived. As for me. 
I’ve been married twice, and this one’s got a tongue. It’s tini! 
for me to get old.” 

“I see. Then you’ll let me grow 'old when I’ve been married 
twice?” 

“You’ll do it of your own accord then,” said Tolley gravely. 
“I shan’t be able to stop you.” 

“But you think you can stop me now?” 

“I’ll try, vicar,” said Tolley, elaborately putting away a sur- 
plice that he pretended was off its right hook to hide a twitch 
ing of his old face. “If you’ve got a trouble, sir, and you’re not 
well, you go away from here and forget all about us for a bit 
and take care of yourself, and you’ll come back yourself again.” 

“A trouble? Who said anything about trouble?” 

“No one said nothing. Me heart tells me, that’s all,” grated 
Tolley. He coughed a few moments and recovered his original 
voice. “I had a son once that fretted about something he’d 
done as was wrong — played about with a bit of money he did. 


192 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


and couldn’t return it, and he looked like you’re looking. There 
was a young woman in that, too. He died. He was consump- 
tive, though. Perhaps you aren’t; but if doctor says ‘go away,’ 
I say go away. There’s ways out of these things that only trees 
and fields and seas and suchlike can find out for you, that T know. 
A bit of dandelion on a grassy bank’ll often make muddles plain 
in a sort of way; so will some o’ them skies that isn’t hid by 
chimneys — and churchspires,” he added spitefully, falling back 
into his ancient manner after his little flight of sentiment. 

The vicar thanked him for his kindly thought and lingered a 
short time talking to him before going out into the raw air. In 
the London streets things looked so black and dreary and wet 
that it was difficult to imagine Tolley’s dandelion on a bank yet. 
yet possibly it was somewhere to be found in sheltered Hamp- 
shire lanes and warm spongy places even now. But it was a 
harsh and bitter spring this year, and he shuddered a little as he 
contemplated the idea of a lonely semi-holiday at such a time 
without the stimulus of his work to keep him from too sadden- 
ing thought. All gardens would remind him of Mary at Kew. 
he said, and the first faint call of springing Nature would only 
come as an invocation of what he had lost — in her and his own 
once glorious hopes. 

Then an extra blast of east wind suddenly taking that wet 
wretched London by storm, and some extra attendance on h'S 
poor, threw him, one of those days, on a bed of sickness ; influ 
enza, the doctor called it, a vague enough, weakening thing that 
left him utterly shaky after ten days of it, and convinced at last 
that he must do something for his health before Lent, which 
was now close upon them. 

He heard one day from a friend at a rather noted clergy hos- 
telry, situated in a warm corner under the Sussex Downs, and 
conceived the idea of going down there for a short change, es- 
pecially as a retreat was to be held there by one of his revered 
friends. 

A rertreat ! He had not thought of that before. If he could 
go there and get some strength and consolation by placing his 
fault and his trouble before the thoughtful and kindly judgment 
of such a man as the missioner — a good and great man, a cele- 
brated bishop, a man of strong and silent character, and unshaken 
consistency of action, he might get some relief at last from his 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


195 


protracted mental suffering. He grasped almost eagerly at the 
chance, and sent in his name to the superior of the hostelry, 
with an enthusiasm that recalled his boyish impulsiveness of old. 

In due time he went down to the retreat, a sad, dim ghost of 
his old self, in search of health and peace, amongst those quiet 
downlands and the blessed shadows of holier, remoter things. 

What had he meant by Mary’s assured future? Had he se 
cured it by his treachery or by his prayers? As he knelt in the 
little white stone chapel, wrapped round in the utter stillness of 
calm nature, and the calm hush that good men make for their 
own souls and those of the bruised and beaten, no one looking 
at his thin face could say. 

Passionately he prayed for the woman who had sinned and 
come to him in vain, and for the woman for whom he said he 
himself had become a traitor. 

Did a little journalist making her tired way over Waterloo 
Bridge feel the winged thing bless her? And did a feverish 
woman away in a Roman hotel find her self-love shaken by flut- 
tering influences to sudden tears? Who can tell how soul kisses 
.soul across the silence, across the world? 


CHAPTER XIX 


"Mrs. Fresne, Mrs. Fresne — is that yon? Please — a moment! 
Is that you?” 

A tremendous black figure, like a monster ghoul swooped on 
to Mary from behind and clutched her by the arm. The arrest 
had taken place on a wretchedly wet December evening in the 
Strand, and the crowds of pushing people and the blocked trafhc 
looked like figures out of some wet inferno, luridly lighted bv 
the shop lights, and sloppy and sticky unspeakably. 

A wet, piercing wind was blowing, and Mary was struggling 
along against it and the falling mist, from the direction of Arun- 
del Street, where she had been visiting a newspaper office in a 
painfully fruitless search for work. A few trifling jobs had 
been the outcome of two whole days so spent, representing, even 
when laboriously done, only a few shillings, and she was hurry- 
ing home again, meaning to cross Waterloo Bridge to the grey 
and infinitely horrible deserts beyond 'it. She started with almost 
hysterical terror as the hand out of the crowd touched her arm, 
showing plainly by her extreme nervousness the ravages even a 
few months of poor living and hard struggles had made on her 
nerves. Her white face, gleaming under the electric light, looked 
pitiful and thinner, and her breath came and went quickly as 
she gazed up at her captor. 

“Yes, it is you!” said a gruff voice, 

“Miss Jacques I” gasped Mary, in utter amazement, staring 
unreservedly at the immense horse-profile dimly showing in 
the gjoomy half-light, and the inevitable and ponderous toque 
wTh its conglomeration of shady and funereal finery. Forgot 
ten visions of Hoydens floated before Mary’s tired eyes. 

“Yes, Miss Jacques. Are you in a hurry? If not, do come in 
here and talk a bit.” She pushed towards an ABC tea-shop, 
which looked warm and steamy seen here in the wet street from 
the outside, Mary followed in entire astonishment. Miss 
Jacques, her most bitter foe, through the Lady Jiberene, to re- 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


m 

quest a chat in a tea-shop ! She racked her brains to recollect 
Hoyden days, but could remember no occasion when Miss Jacques 
had even condescended to speak to her, except to bully her, be 
cause the drawing-room was not hot enough, though the baro- 
meter used to register 80°. 

“Oh dear,” groaned poor Mary; “am I to hear a long string 
of Hoyden squabbles again? I really shan’t defend anything or 
anybody if she begins — I’m too tired ” 

But Miss Jacques, after ordering hot chocolate in a very lordly 
and distant fashion, proceeded to ask Mary with a certain stately 
deference, even courtesy, whether she was continuing her secre- 
tarial work anywhere. Her eyes, when she asked this question, 
roamd short-sighted and heavy-lidded over any object within 
their vision, save Mary’s poor and inadequately warm clothes 
her worn face, her gloves whose original colour was lost in the 
mist of tradition. She did not appear to see these things. Mary 
felt a rush of gratitude to her for refraining from the impertinent 
inspection that would certainly have been her fate at the hands 
of Lady Jiberene under such circumstances — the clear curiosity 
of the vulgarly kind, that takes away half their kindness. 

A reserved outline of Mar^'^’s experiences was soon told, a 
mere sketch, indicated carelessly, as pride will always do. Miss 
Jacques was left to fill in the details for herself. But she did 
not appear to be so employed. 

“And Lady Jiberene has not used her— her boundless Press 
influence to find you other — er— literary pursuits?’^ said the sol- 
emn lady, pulling off her gloves aivl re-arranging some very solid 
ancient rings, mainly of yellow topaz and black pearl and human 
hair, worn not in the least as jewellery— she was tar from being so 
frivolous — but as formal reminders or mementoes of somebody 
or sofnething in a sombre past. Practically they occupied the 
place of a portable tombstones, and did not look unlike them. 

“I did not expect it,” said Mary proudly. ‘ 1 would not have 
accepted it if she had.” 

“Really! Oh well, I though she was your friend?” 

“She was— once. But she— well— she mistrusted me. I can* 

not endure mistrust.” 

“Certainly not!” snapped Miss Jacques in her belligerent, res- 
onant voice. “Nobody could, I should think. A little patronis- 
ing upstart ! Unheard of till yesterday. Of no family— nobody. 


196 


A SHEPHERD OF KEXSINGTON 


A soap-boiler’s wife, with a petty handle to her vulgar name, 
and a string of paltry, middle-class beliefs and prejudices and 
patronages and notions ! Dear me !” 

“Oh, it isn’t that,” said Mary. “It’s just the mistrust itseH 
that one minded, you know. The other things are her affair, 
not mine. In many ways Lady Jiberene was kind, very kind. 
It was her disbelief that one found impossible to bear.” 

“You put it most excellently. You show your breeding and 
your sense. Nevertheless, I hold,” said Miss Jacques, jerking 
a teaspoon containing a crumb in a dramatic manner, “that the 
woman is utterly insufferable, unendurable, common, impudent, 
and underbred. Put her away. She is done with.” 

The crumb flew away and hit the pink evening newspaper of 
a clerk reading over his tea. Mary felt that Lady Jiberene was 
really finally disposed of by sign and symbol ; though the clerk, 
who had got her, glanced contemptuously up at Miss Jacques 
with half-absorbed, half-resentful eyes, that clearly said, “Dotty 
old girl,” to any spectator who might have been watching. 

“It is odd that you should remember me,” said Mary ; “espe- 
cially to recognise me on such a foggy evening in such a crowd !" 

“Oh, I remembered you well enough,’ 'said Miss Jacques. I 
have bothered about you for some time now. Your resigna- 
tion was brought about most unfairly. Both Muriel Hyde and 
I felt that, and we made every effort to secure your being rein- 
vited by the club to take your place there again. But it was 
not to be. They are too jealous. Muriel Hyde tried to get 
your address several times, but failed. We have both beeii 
very bothered about you. We do like proper treatment.” 

Mary remembered now the five pound note and the typewrit 
ten letter, and her eyes filled with tears. To think that these 
two poor Hoydens, whom she had hitherto regarded as enemies, 
should have put their heads together on her behalf, worried them- 
selves because she had been unfairly treated by the club ! 

She showed some of her gratitude in her eyes as she thanked 
Miss Jacques. 

“I wish I had known !” she said. “One needed a little cheer- 
ing up at that time.” 

But her stern friend did not unbend at all, simply remarking 
airily, “Only vulgar persons let the gentle or the helpless suffe" 
for their own convenience. I had to fight that woman Jiberene 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


197 


myself, but I was horrified when I learnt that by my doing so 
you had been made a scapegoat. The law of chivalry demands 
that we should be scrupulously just to those in any way unde’’ 
our power. These are our traditions. They should be un 
broken.” 

Mary gazed with awe at this solemn woman in the steamy 
tea-shop, sitting up erect in her odd garments, a mixture of 
grimness and finery, enunciating sentiments on the law of chiv- 
alr3^ She remembered the relation who was a peer, the Lord 
of Appeal, the Hoyden tradition that Miss Jacques was “well- 
born,” and in spite of the long onyx earrings of a lodging-house 
keeper, and the dirty gardenias and out-of-curl tips of the tower- 
ing toque, she now really began to believe in these things. How 
little had she known Miss Jacques ! 

Their conversation led to literary work, and her friend told 
her that she was at the present time very busy assisting in the 
compiling of an extensive history of heraldic emblems, in col - 
laboration with her cousin, Lord Petercastle, an antiquarian of 
some note. She explained this very solemnly and cursorily, 
slurring over Lord Petercastle in a manner that would have 
shocked Lady Jiberene, who would have got the fullest possible 
flavour out of every syllable of that noble baron’s title. For once 
the familiarity that breeds contempt struck Mary as dignified. 

Miss Jacques said she wanted an intelligent typist and assist- 
ant. 

“You type, don’t you?” 

“Yes, but I have no machine.” 

“Oh, 1 have. Suppose you fill up some of your spare hours 
by helping me in this? I could arrange a weekly honorarium, 
or as you like. If you care to see the work before you decide 
you might come home with me now, unless you're busy. Fvi 
got chambers in York Place, Baker Street. Do you care to?’ 

Mary tried to answer in a businesslike, not a grateful tone 
Miss Jacques clearly meant her to, but she could not help seeing 
behind this elaborately simple offer the generous thought in the 
breast of this mostly lordly of Hoydens. Of course she con 
sented to “look” at the work, her heart leaping up at the thought 
of a few extra shillings a week and regular work, and they got 
into a ’bus at Charing Cross and went home together to Miss 
Jacques’ “chambers.” 


198 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


Mary would have called them lodgings pure and simple, bi:‘ 
she remembered that Hoyden tradition demanded masculine terms 
for most things, and so followed her new friend up the thickly 
but shabbily carpeted staircase, made almost impassable by the 
perfectly overwhelming smell of dinner — apparently curried mut- 
ton of unrecorded antiquity — since Miss Jacques could never en- 
dure an open window, and into the little “floor'’ of rooms where 
the lady lived when not at her club. 

It was a good thing that the night was cold, as the sitting 
room, a large oddly shaped apartment made out of two rooms 
that turned a corner, was quite overwhelmingly hot and stuffy. 
It was also unspeakably untidy ; littered by papers, books thrown 
open, books put back in shelves anyhow — sometimes with the cut 
edges showing out of the bookcases instead of the binding : 
slippers, cigarette boxes and ashtrays, inkstands, files, foot- 
warmers, footstools, and photographs. The furniture was heavy, 
stufiy, old-fashioned, shabby, and the wallpaper was ancient 
“flock,” of a depressing liver-colour and gold. But on the walls 
were some exquisite dark pictures — chiefly portraits — of people 
who were clearly personages of distinction, the relatives of this 
mysterious lady. There was one that took Mary’s fancy, a 
little oil painting, looking like a Lawrence, of a dark man of 
the Lord Melbourne type, his sombre court dress one blaze of 
stars and orders and insignia, these, and a coloured ribbon 
across his breast giving the only touch of life to its intense 
shadows. 

Miss Jacques saw her look of admiration as she stopped before 
the picture. “That is my father, the Chevalier Jacques,” she 
said, now for the first time in Mary’s hearing pronouncing her 
name in the French fashion, “He was a gallant and brilliant 
man, who did this country a great service.” 

“And was he then French?” said Mary with interest. 

“He was, yes — but naturalised here. My mother was Lady 
Jane Roden, the daughter of the then Lord Petercastle. There 
she is — in pink silk. She was a beauty, as possibly you see for 
yourself. She met him at the court of Louis Phillipe.” 

She gave Mary these little details in a matter-of-course man- 
ner, as she Ihrew off her shabby enveloping mantle, and began 
hunting for some special MS. out of the hopeless-looking heap 
before her. To assist herself to be patient in the search she 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


199 


lighted a cigarette and smoked it, and Mary, could almost have 
laughed outright as she beheld the queer figure with its severely 
dressed hair (for once the vast toque was off) pulled tightly 
from the brow with a velvet band round the head, and an ob- 
viously “stuffed” knot behind, the last relic of a chignon: the 
gaunt form, the sloppy clothes, and — ciuaintest contrast — the 
onyx earrings and the cigarette ! 

She went over and offered to help in the search, and after a 
really long rummage they found the document half hidden under 
a torn Almanac de Gotha, an odd slipper, a priceless cr3'^stal 
cupid given to Lady Jane Jacques by Queen Hortense, and a 
Britannia metal ashtray advertising somebody’s mustard. 

She soon found that Miss Jacques’ MS., though itself origi- 
nal and accurate to a degree, was usually to be found in these 
or similar surroundings, and that its style consisted in jotting 
down as many conjunctions, and even small nouns, indicated 
by a simple initial letter, leaving the typist and printer to de- 
cipher this as well as possible; while the caligraphy, a forceful 
jagged edition of the old beloved Italian hand, was incompre- 
hensible to a degree, being often duplicated, under-written, and 
even crossed, with the wildest disregard to sequence. The 
business of the assistant would be to disentangle all this, and 
make of it a fair, clear, readable copy in typewriting. But Mary 
only too gladly undertook to do it. Happily for herself she 
was very old-fashioned, and patience was one of her require- 
ments, and she so badly needed the money that she willingly, 
even with trembling fear at her luck, ventured to pledge herself 
to the work. So it was arranged. A salary was spoken of. 
“Of course you observe I am wretchedly poor,” said Miss Jacques 
with as little concern as when she had announced that her mother 
was a beauty at the court of Louis Phillipe. ‘T don’t say it to 
beg the question, but to assure you that I am not mean — I hope. 
I live here because I am poor — and because I like my inde- 
pendence. My cousin will, however, reimburse me for any rea- 
sonable expenses, though of course he is also a pauper. He 
is, however, a decent pauper, an altruistic pauper, a chivalrous 
pauper. So if you will give me a few steady hours of every 
day for a pound a week we might settle it off-hand?” 

To Mary it was wealth indeed. She settled it off-hand; and 
she spent the evening with her new employer being initiated 


200 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


into her duties, and learning all the ins and outs, the ups arivl 
downs, the twists and mauls and tangles of crossed Italian hand- 
writing. After that it became a settled thing for her to make 
her laborious way day by day to the York Place study to spen-.l 
some hours at her task at the battered typewriter, and the tan- 
gled MSS., thankful beyond words for this wonderful boon of 
employment. 

She did not always see Miss Jacques. That lady did most of 
her writing by night after Mary had gone, in the fumes of to- 
bacco smoke, inspired, perhaps, by the sounds of cab whistles 
and hansom wheels that made her street merry after darkness 
fell. Her days she usually spent in museums, in libraries, at 
Somerset House, with the Hoydens for her headquarters. The 
routine was varied by sudden and violent flops into Mayfair, 
which she had, of course, a perfect right to enter, and where 
the great grim doors of duchesses opened gravely to receive 
her odd figure when it pleased her to command them to do so. 
And the infinite esprit de corps of her class precluded her from 
even being considered funny beyond a certain point at these rela- 
tives’ houses. 

‘‘Oh, but of course Harriet is odd — she’s so clever,” a bril- 
liant young duchess, of Petercastle make, would say, after on-:; 
of these chance visits. 

“That’s so nice of her,’ ’a dowager would murmur. “There 
was nothing else for her to do, as she didn’t marry.” 

“Anyhow, it’s much better than gambling, and all that,” a 
man would put in ; “for women, I mean,” he added hastily. He 
did not, naturally, wish to include Shakespeare, who probably 
would have been in much less mischief playing bridge for penny 
points. 

The “chambers” at York Place were desperately hot, but Mary 
never dare dream of opening the windows, having strict injunc- 
tions not to do so. She would leave them when her work was 
done perfectly fagged and breathless, and convinced that if the 
Chevalier Jacques had only cultivated less curried mutton on 
staircases he need not have died an early death at all. She 
always blamed him for the windows and staircase. She could 
not have told why, for certainly he had not lived in York Place. 

But to her patroness she was devoutly grateful, so much so 
that she was at a loss for words. And even had she had them 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


201 


they would have been unwelcome, even, perhaps, regarded as 
offensive; for slowly she began to see that Miss Jacques’ kind- 
ness to herself was actuated by a stern devotion to an ideal of 
her own, rather than to any sense of personal friendship. Th; 
ideal was the old feudal tradition of the lord’s responsibility 
with regard to those who were under his sway : the baron and 
the thane, the prince and the vassal. 

loo courteous to treat Mary as anything but a nominal equal. 
Miss Jacques clearly considered that she was fulfilling a duty 
with regard to her case, such as her ancestors would have 
deemed unavoidable, unquestionablcv Through the ravages of 
her own warfare this vassal had suffered. It became her duty 
to restore to her all that was in her power. 

Sometimes Mary was tempted to think that whatever she per 
sonally had been like, or however ungrateful she had been. Miss 
Jacques would have still fulfilled her own self-inflicted obliga 
tion by assisting her in this way ; and on dark winter afternoons 
she would sometimes steal a furtive, almost yearning glance 
at that long equine, immovable face, as it pored sternly over 
ancient heraldic volumes, and great tomes of history, and won- 
der how far she was a part of her benefactor’s ideal of class 
dut}^ and how far, ever so humbly, her friend. 

One day Muriel Hyde visited the York Place chambers, one 
of the very, very few Hoydens who had ever been admitted there. 
Mary found her when she came to her duties one afternoon, 
after a long morning with other work, lounging back ungraccfull}- 
in one of Miss Jacques’ biggest and untidiest old musty chairs, 
smoking and laying down the law. Her boyish^ fresh-coloured 
face under the tweed motor-cap, her hard, clear eyes, her de- 
cisive features, again struck Mary as handsome, and, now that 
she knew her better, oddly attractive. 

“Hello !” cried the lady, still sprawling and waving her cig- 
arette in hospitable manner. “How d’ye do, old comrade? 
What an age since you and I met !” 

Mary went up and shook hands, her face expressing the pleas- 
ure she felt, a little shy of this most justly named Hoyden. 

“Glad you’re helping here,” continued Miss Hyde, waving 
her cigarette airily towards the MSS. and the crystal cupid 
“Declare she needs it. Hear you’re most awfully clever and 
useful. D’you know,” she sat up suddenly and looked Mar\ 


202 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


squarely in the face with her handsome grey eyes, “I am 

ashamed of those Hoydens, for the trick they pla3’^ed you. Al- 
though it was my side did it, I’d like you to know from my own 

lips, and on my honour, I had nothing to do with it ; didn’t 

know how they were scheming, or what was up in the least.” 

“I know,” said Mary, looking down at her eager flushed 
face. ‘‘You like ‘fair play’; for that T shall never, never forget 
you !” 

Muriel flopped back into the shabby chair with a jerk, a 

mask of entire impassiveness coming over her strong features, 
and contemplating her cigarette carefully, with something of 
the sulky look of a big boy really ashamed of himself. 

“Sorry I didn’t get it for you, then,” she said, but Mary 
knew that she understood the allusion, and had in her own curt 
fashion accepted the inferential thanks. She crossed the room 
to her typewriting machine, half inclined to laugh at this original 
boy-woman. In the Hoyden days there had been no doubt 
in her mind, even without, as she thought, partiall}', that Miss 
Jacques and Miss Hyde were the inferior party in the arena, 
and Lady Jiberene. and Miss Grogan the undoubted heroes. Yet, 
in her hour of distress, it was these two strange friends who 
had showered on her the best kindnesses in their power, though 
she had walked under their enemy’s banner ; one in the name 
of feudal pride, one in the name of fair play — both, it seemed 
to her, in Christian charity calling itself by other nick-names. 


CHAPTER XX 


“Going to leave Rome, Mrs. Coiirtman, just when it is feally 
beginning to be lively?” cried a voice out of the throng. 

Florence was walking along the Via Gregoriana, looking 
wretched and ill. The vision of a Roman spring, of branching 
almond blossom, and sapphire skies, and strong lights and 
shadows cast on crumbling stone was in all its rapturous won- 
der about her, but she walked amongst it, ghostlike, unhappy, 
and absorbed. 

“Lively?” Lent, you mean?” she Said. 

“Well, certainly. It’s going to be crowded this year, I hear.” 

“Yes, so I believe. But I’ve had bad news from England.” 

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Anything serious?” 

“Oh, legal business — heaven knows the end of it. And I’ve 
been ill, Sir John. Rome doesn’t suit me — look at those peas- 
ants ! Do 3^ou believe in that?” 

She and her companion were standing in the middle of the 
pathway, and on the kerb stood a vendor of small sacred images, 
vulgar matters of plaister and gaudy paint. His hat, pulled 
well over his brows, shaded a face clearly not Italian, possibly 
more the type of the commercial Belgian Jew. Oppressed by 
the strong sun, he suddenly pushed back his hat to wipe his 
brow, and though the action was only momentary, revealed a 
repulsive squint, eyes crossing and nearly meeting over the thick 
heavy nose. A passing peasant woman and her husband, catch- 
ing this, immediately pointed at him with the extended first and 
second fingers of their hands spread out- like horns, horror ni 
their v/ide eyes, and following up this strange pantomime b\' 
crossing themselves rapidly and muttering as they hurried away. 

“The evil eye?” said Sir John Hailey. “Ask me another! 
Do you?” 


20 + 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I do. There seems to 
be one on me.” 

“Oh, nonsense, you’re hipped. Come and see Ethel, and 
we’ll get up some parties for you. We’ve only just arrived 
at our old villa, and I heard you wer^ leaving to-day.” 

“Yes, thanks. I’ll come to see Ethel. For I’m going back 
to England at once. I start to-morrow. I’ve had a long- 
winter between Venice and here, and now I must make up for 
lost time, and go back to England without delay. Venice gave 
me low fever — wretched bog ! There are lots of letters and 
business to attend to now I’m convalescent. I haven’t read half 
of them.” 

She passed on, the smile conventionally called up on Sir John’s 
behalf changing immediately to the settled frown of anxiety 
that she had worn before the encounter. Her eyes looked fev- 
erish and hard, and a peevish curl showed itself at the corners 
of her nose, that most unbecoming of temper’s signals. She 
entered the door of her hotel languidly, shivering a little, in spite 
of the genial warmth. She was thinner, and looked older and ’ 
more haggard, and was certainly not well. After fever in 
Venice, Rome had offered her all it could — friends, gaieties, 
lovely weather, ever magnificent religious pageants ; but the 
strange inward conviction of an ever-dogging Nemesis at her 
heels had destroyed her chance of regaining her old night’s 
rest ,her freshest looks, and her sense of all enjoyment, driving 
her to a condition of reckless, restless searching that was be- 
coming a monomania. And then a fresh trouble had come upon 
her, and for the first time her selfish habit of leaving letters un- 
opened when she felt disinclined to read them was now to do 
her a bad turn, little expected. 

Her indignant and culpable ignoring of Lady Jiberene’s letter 
in the autumn, and even of Cartyn’s, though it had brought a 
sense of wrathful triumph at the time, was now wreaking out 
a slow vengeance on her nerves and spirits ; had been doing so 
for the last few months. She said to herself that here was 
Lent upon them — already preparations for the carnival week 
were making Rome gay, and drawing crowds of new arrivals — 
and she was not a bit happier or more at peace than she had 
been when, nearly a year go, she had sought the Church’s for- 
giveness. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


205 


It was the Church she blamed. They were all the same, she 
said, these priests, her mind flying back to Cartyn. Hard, un- 
imaginative, incapable of seeing any trouble or difficulty from 
any point of view but their own, and that such a horribly paro- 
chial one. After all the vicar of St. Chad’s did not really know 
her world; to him it seemed perfectly easy to do impossible re- 
nunciating things, especially in theory, and naturally his advice 
was of no practical good, unless you were built like that too, and 
she wasn’t. 

“I told him 1 should never be church}^” said Florence, “ex- 
cept just in bits, now and then, and I never shall. But even 
the bits are going now\” But a lapse in her correspondence 
had brought about suddenly a state of affairs to make her, u 
not “churchy,” horribly anxious. 

She had been deeply disappointed in Venice. Colonel Gray- 
don had never come after all. It is true he had written to her, 
explaining — his plea was business — and she had had to make 
the best of that, and of the friends at whose villa she had elected 
to stay. But she was cross and offended with him for his laps'^ 
of gallantry, and spent hours in trying to account for it. 

‘T’m sure I looked my best when I last saw him,” she mused. 

‘Tt can’t be that. That was a really excellent masseuse I had 

at the time — much better than the creature here ! I know > 
hadn’t a wrinkle. And my waist measured well, an inch less 

than it does now. And the colour I had my hair last summer 

was really nicer, taken altogether, than the horrid muddle it is 
now — green at the roots, unless I keep every nerve on it and 
fly to the man once a fortnight ! What can have changed him ? 
Some cat.” 

Then an illness followed, a trifling affair of malaria, but very 
weakening and depressing. In a fit of semi-invalid’s sulks 
she had, tossed aside all her letters and refused to read them, 
busying herself with her Italian friends. 

But now, here in Rome, in the bright spring, she had very 
lazily begun to turn over this pile of disregarded correspondence. 
Amongst it there was another from Colonel Graydon : 

“Dear girl,” it said, “I’m awaiting your return to this desolate 
country ever so anxiously. When are you coming, or are you 
ever coming? Nuisance I couldn’t get out there in the winter. 


206 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


but it was a fact that I was stuck in town, more or less. I’ve 
had nothing but legal business all the winter. By the by, do 
you remember that affair of poor Maurice Fresne’s? Rather 
a wretched sort of business about a will, and his poor little wife? 
Tallard & Tallard have written to me about the re-investment 
of the poor girl’s annuity money. Some parson has been 
to them about her, I hear. Seems she is in a bad way. I have 
to see them in a few days about the whole business. Wasn’t she 

an old chum of yours? C. G.” 

/ 

She glanced at the date. The letter was weeks old. By 
this time he had learnt whatever there was to be learnt. 

So was the cup of a newly discovered happiness dashed from 
poor Florence’s lips, and in its place was a deep and bitter 
draught of anxiety and apprehension, deeper and far more bit- 
ter than any she had known ; for now, not only might an old 
friendship be at stake, but a lover’s regard. 

What did he mean by Tallard & Tallard writing to him, and 
what was this about Cartyn having been to them ? For, of 
course, "some parson” could only be he. There was no other 
interested in Mary. The letter was nearly two months old, 
and Colonel Graydon said he was to go to the solicitor’s about 
Mary's money ! Terrible as were her apprehensions, she could 
not quite believe as yet that Cartyn had deliberately betrayed 
her. What he had actually done she could not guess, except 
that in some way he had roused the suspicions of the trustees — 
that seemed as clear as daylight. How had he done it? In 
what way, by what casuistry, had he reconciled such a course 
with his conscience? And where would it end? Suspicions 
with lawyers — Florence’s childlike faith in lawyers was only 
equalled by that she felt for religious teachers — might lead to 
discover^', to accusation, her evil conscience told her — accusation 
of herself; and if so, what would become of Graydon’s regard 
for herself? If, before, the stakes were heavy, this letter had 
added infinite weight to them. 

■ At all costs she must fly to England. Confused, uncertain 
as she was as to all that had been happening during the long 
winter, it Avas plain that with this imminent terror threatening 
her with immediate destruction she must at least be on the spot 
to combat her enemies. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


207 


“Air. Cartyn behaved badly to me, but he is a good man — 
a good man,” she kept saying to herself feverishly over and over 
again. “He wouldn’t play a trick like this— he couldn’t. He 
daren’t. I know he is good, whatever I am, and however tire- 
some he is. No, no; it can’t be that. It can’t. If it were 
I would never believe in goodness again ! But I must be wrong. 
I will go home and see what it is, what it means. I’ll see 
Colonel Graydon at once, and find out what, how much he 
knows. I must ! I must !” 

It was a hot, still night after the perfect day, damp with mias- 
mic dews and mists that had made even the idle Italian servants 
draw to the huge hideous “damask” curtains across the windows, 
curtains with 3^ellow tassels, reminiscent, as are so many things 
Italian, of the begone “sixties” and “seventies.” Florence pulled 
them apart and leaned out for a breath of air. Up out of the 
distant shadows of the far Campagna, awful and tomblike with 
the great ghostly arm of the Claudian Aqueduct winding across 
its dangerous wilderness, her dreary eyes stared vacantly at the 
weird prospect. She looked as old and faded and as out of 
date as the tawdry curtains draped round her, as though she. 
too, had mouldered there till her bloom had gone. She made 
a picture of a woman who had got her own way, done exactly 
as she liked from the very first, and paid for it in looks, peace 
of mind, gaiety, and health. It is a very common picture. 

But she left for England the next day, determined not to 
bear her mad anxiety any longer. 

Her first act on returning to London was to go straight to 
her solicitors, nominally intent on lesser business, but practically 
with a view of ascertaining once and for all whether they had 
so far received any communication from Alessrs. Tallard & Tal- 
lard. Alary’s solicitors. She was too nervous to ask outright 
in so many words, but her man of business made no mention of 
any fresh trouble beyond the small matter of speculative loss 
about whicH he had written to her, and she obliged to conclude 
that so far her enemies, as she now called them in her own 
rash mind, had not commenced any negotiations. How soon 
they might do so, however, was another matter. She actually 
had to see her lawyers before daring to communicate with Colo- 
nel Graydon ; she had only replied to that letter of his which 
had cheered her from Venice, that she was coming back to 


208 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


England in the early spring and had purposely, and in iitt*'-' 
terror, avoided fixing any date. If, as he said in his letter, 
he was going to Messrs. Tallard & Tallard’s on the matter of 
Mary’s money, and that immediately after they had had an 
interview with Cartyn, she dare not guess how much he might 
know by the time she arrived in town again ! But now that 
she had arrived, desperation, the desperation that is born of 
long-gnawing, maddening fear, made her set to work to find out 
the worst with all the stmg-froid of the already condemned. 
From her own solicitors she went on to her club to lunch; 
they had taken up her morning — or, that bit of the forenoon 
that her toilet allowed over for the thing she called morning — 
and now she must think out her next move. Her club was 
a smarter affair altogether than the Hoydens’, and was distin- 
guished by very delicate and chaste eighteenth century decora- 
tions of rather a chilly character. You needed a poker-shaped 
back for the gilt and tapestry chairs, and nobody dreamed of 
smoking; neither did anybody dream of knowing anybody else, 
but rather sat round on the gold thrones at teatime judging 
others from under deeply suspicious brows. These were less 

women who “did things” than women who waited for other 

people to do them. But for this scrutiny Mrs. Courtman cared 
absolutely nothing. She had friends enough without hunting 
for them at clubs, she said, and only came here for peace and 

quiet, or to write letters, or telephone. But even the unap- 

proachable ones on the stiff chairs noticed that she looked 
wretchedly ill and miserable — even they knew her by sight, and 
that she had apparently added years on to her age during that 
time out of England. Ladies who could not afford or manage 
to go abroad for long stays themselves reflected upon this fact 
with some real satisfaction, and studied poor Florence's thinnned 
features and jaded eyes, under which dark marks showed, and 
noted her feverish worried ways and manner of speaking with 
a righteous British feeling of superior virtue and superior insu- 
larity. That most bewildering of feminine logic — the assump- 
tion that I am better-looking and virtuous, because somebody 
else looks ill and cross — must have contributed greatly to the 
self-congratulation of Florence’s club-fellows at such a period ! 

She was trying, over lunch, at which she grumbled, to make 
up her mind whether she would go and see Cartyn and openly 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


209 


demand the truth from him, or motor over to Sheen to Colonel 
Graydon’s, and under the cover of light chatter finVl out if he had 
heard anything. The question was, if he had, would the chat- 
ter be so very light? Good gracious! suppose he knew already 
what must he think of her! Oh, she must see him at all risks 
at once ; she would soon tell from his manner if he knew. He 
was a man of strict honour ; he would despise her too much to 
help showing it if he did, in spite of his courtesy and kindness 
to her sex. Well, she would get it over. She finished her 
lunch and took a cab back to Darnley Gardens, there ordering 
her motor to be in readiness to go to Sheen. It must be owned, 
then, that she dressed herself up in some of her hnest attire. 

Womanlike, she had a sneaking idea that if she looked very 

pretty indeed, her judge, even if he did know the full extent of 
her perfidy, would not be able to be so very angry, at any 
rate, not quite so angry. It took her and a badgered maid quite 
a long time to select that costume, for though it was a fine March 
day, it was bitterly cold, and a bracing east wind met one at cor- 
ners. Her dress, which was a beautiful soft lavender, to be 
worn under a sable motor-coat, had a special hat belonging to 

it, but now the question worried Florence as to whether that 

hat looked quite penitent? It turned down very much in the 
front, and was a dream of shaded blues in massed hyacinths, a 
very smart French thing. The question was do you look as 
sorry and appealing with your hat turned down over your nose, 
as you do with the brim turned up wistfully, revealing a sweet 
yearning countenance? Florence tried with a hand-mirror and 
made faces at herself to see. This is all the more characteristic 
of her as she really was in trouble. With her it was alvrays 
impossible for any sane person to tell where acting left off and 
reality began, but certainly at that anxious moment she was per- 
fectly serious. The turned down, leghorn-shaped hat, striking 
her as a little too coy and suggestive of bright eyes peeping 
up under it, like Maud ^fuller in her hay field — she sent for a 
toque, lavender in tone too, and with a few white roses on it ; 
this headgear set further back on the head and showed her brow, 
from which Florence now made her woman put back her hair 
a little. 

“Yes, that will do,” she said . critically to herself. ‘But 
.strings would improve it. \ou cant be quite so sorry in a 


210 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


toque as you can in a bonnet. Adelc,” to the maid, “fetch me 
some of that tulle, the lilac that we got for those scarves.” 

This was brought, and she proceeded to put it over the little 
toque, pinning it at the top will a jewelled pin, and gathering up 
the ends under her chin in a Quaker-like bow that was certainly 
very becoming. 

“Fm glad I do look ill !” she said, as she glanced back at the 
chaste vision. “It goes with the bonnet, anyhow.” 

So armed she set off to Sheen. If any person especiallv 
gifted with common sense, or what is perhaps a truer name for 
some of it, common censoriousness, here condemns poor Florence 
for levity and want of any real feeling, let me point out that on 
her way to Sheen, hidden in her motor, she cried a little to her- 
self; it may be in self-pity, but it was, so far as it went, real 
feeling. 

But arrived at “Wray fords” she pulled herself together, and 
whirled up Colonel Graydon's pretty cedar drive quite jauntily. 
A bitter disappointment awaited her. He was away golfing in 
Norfolk, said his man; he was not expected home for a day or 
two. Alas, for the Quaker bonnet ! 

She came away with more worry at her heart than the wasted 
toilet warranted, or even the certainty of having to wait inter- 
minably before she really knew her fate. For she now recol 
lected that Mary’s other trustees beside Mr. Tallard and Colonel 
Graydon, Mr. Ardleigh, was a great golfer and had some fine 
links in Norfolk — had he, by any chance gone down to see him 
over this wretched business? It looked uncommonly like it, 
and if so she might as well give up all hope. 

She was doomed to disappointment again, for when she called 
at St. Chad’s Vicarage, Mr. Cartyn was away too, had gone down 
to a Lenten retreat, said his servant, a day or two ago. He 
would not be back for a week. 

She was now so worked up to such a fever of longing to 
know something that she felt she would go mad unless she came 
to some conclusion before another night went over her head 
and, as she sat considering, she recollected that there was one 
other source to which she could apply — the solicitors. And 
then the bonnet would not be wasted either, since even lawyers, 
are men, and they might by its means be reduced to giving her 
at least a hint of the information she wanted. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


211 


It was rapidly growing dark, towards the close of a typical 
English spring day, and she dashed down to Whitehall, the 
great white globes of electric light amongst the dark trees were 
like staring skull faces along her worried path. 

The head of the firm of Messrs. Tallard & Tallard had not 
left though the afternoon was late. Yes, he would see Mrs 
Courtman for a few moments. She was shown almost at once 
into a dark wainscoted room with a low ceiling and deep em- 
brasured window, the last remains of what had once been a 
riverside mansion like “Wrayfords” dreamy centuries ago, when 
the view from its lattices was of gardens and terraces and river; 
not, as now, backyards, with caretakers’ washing hung out to 
dry, and nobody’s cats fighting on the protruding leads. Once 
the home of courtiers, it was now devoted to another and more 
serious order of court, and bore its subjection with a stately, 
sullen dignity that only an exquisite Adam mantelpiece, covered 
with law-books and wafer boxes, seems able to display ; a lesson 
in dignity, even offended dignity, which might well be taken to 
heart by the wretched vandalism of the age — if it had one. 

Florence, intent on her errand and incidentally upon her bon- 
net, was happily unconscious of any such nonsensical, out-of-date 
ideas, and entered the august presence of the head of Tallard & 
Tallard, a gentleman strongly resembling an Airedale terrier, 
iron-grey and perky, with much more eye to her own effect than 
lo that of his Adam’s mantelpiece, or his Grinling Gibbons ceil- 
ing covered with spider webs. 

She apologised for her intrusion. It was to ask a favour 
that she had come (here the tulle bonnet strings came into 
wistful effect.) A little favour— a mere matter of courtesy. 

Were they not the solicitors to a Mrs. Fresnc, the widow of 
Marcus Fresne, Esquire, late of Bahore? 

The grave-faced perky gentleman at the desk bowed assent. 
Mrs. Courtman proceeded to say that she was an old friend 
of that lady’s. She had been away, but— er— she had heard 
that Mrs. Fresne had changed her place of abode, and that a 
er— clergyman, also a mutual friend, had been here to Messrs. 
Tallard & TallarTs on business connected with her? 

“Yes,” the lawyer agreed, that was certainly so. 

“And,” Florence went on, twiddling about with her gloves h\ 
an innocent manner, “as Mr. Cartyn is a friend of mine I should 


212 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


be exceedingly obliged if you will tell me — er — the nature of hi.> 
business ; a matter/' she added hastily on getting a sharp stare, 
"which I could easily find out for myself by applying to him 
only that he happens to be away in a retreat, whatever that 
means, and cannot be communicated with,” 

The lawyer, who had been most courteously “sizing” the lady 
from the very first, including, oh alas ! that exceedingly Quaker 
bonnet, now asked her very neatly and in as few words as pos- 
sible why she did not await Mr. Cartyn’s return from the retreat 
and ask him personally, since the matter was merely one of 
friendship? 

“Oh no,” said Florence, in her hurry forgetting her ever- 
vague sense of caution and plunging impulsively into a betrayal 
of her own anxiety. "I could not wait till then. Mr. Cartyi' 
is not expected to be home for a week, and I am most particu- 
larly anxious to — to understand the whole proceeding before 
then !” 

The lawyer smiled to himself as he tapped his desk lightly with 
a ruler. This good lady was positively childish. 

“You cannot suppose, madam,” he said, “that I am at liberty 
even if I wished, to give to you, a stranger, a full account of 
the nature of my business v.fith this gentleman. I fear it is ut 
terly, quite utterly aganist all rule or precedent for me to do so. 
I do not wish to appear discourteous, but ” 

“Oh dear. How tiresome all you people are!” cried Florence. 
"You’re all one mass of red tape. Well, do then just tell m^ 
one thing, which I am sure is in no way letting out any horrid 
legal secrets, or anything bothering like that — did this gentle- 
man, Mr. Cartyn, make any disclosure to you concerning the lady 
in question?” 

The lawyer’s brows contracted, and his simply amused look 
N faded into one of searching scrutiny and suspicion. 

“Again I must entirely decline to reply,” he said, a trifle of 
sternness creeping into his tone. 

Florence shook her furs and feathers crossly and impatiently. 

“Very well, then — one more question. Did he refer to he:* 
husband’s will in any way, and to the manner in which it was 
left?” 

Again a gleam came into the legal eye, and the curt legal voice 
said — 


A SHEPHERD OE KENSINGTON 


213 


“Madam, once and for all I cannot reply to your question.” 
He stared at her steadily and sternly. Florence’s worried eyes 
were caught and held by his for the space of a few seconds 
Good heavens, had he even now answered with his eyes, when 
his lips had refused consent? A wave of horror swept over 
Florence’s anxious heart. He must know something to look 
at her like that. She had not missed a single glance of his eye 
and turn of his changing expressions, and they all pointed most 
clearly to the fact that he had a hidden store of knowledge, that 
he was primed with some secret strength and resisting power 
that was full of inhnite menace. She rose to go, angry, ter- 
rified, and deeply disappointed. The Airedale terrier picked up 
her card which had been lying on his desk in front of him, placed 
there by his clerk, and glanced at it again. 

“Mrs. Courtman — ah! — of Darnley Gardens, late of Bahore?” 
he said. “Indeed ! I am exceedingly sorry, madam, but I 
hardly realised your name and personality when you entered the 
office. I am indeed sorry that I am unable to oblige you with any 
information.” 

Florence bowed the Quaker bonnet in a storm of inward indig- 
nation, and swepc noisily out of the legal presence. She re- 
entered her motor and fled away, in far worse case than before. 

She must fill up her time somehow, she said. She had one 
ghastly sleepless night after that busy, unprofitable day, and then 
she plunged headlong into as many diversions as she could rea- 
sonably think of, and these were not hard to seek. Several 
of her friends were in town, and she made for their society 
with eager haste, covering up as well as she could the gnawing 
pain of anxiety that was ruining her comfort and her rest. 

Then at last came the day of Cartyn’s return. He was not 
to be back till the evening, and she filled up the afternoon by 
going to a palmist’s in Bond Street. Even the palmist’s usual 
information about there being two men — “a man and a dark 
man— and a woman who is false to you, do not trust her,” was 
filled with new meaning for her I She was often captious and 
hard to satisfy when visiting these oracles, but to-day the ancient 
fiat seemed vividly dramatic, full of desperate ulterior meaning. 
Oh, that dear dark man ! How familiar a puppet he is on such 
stages, yet how sure he is of belief, even respect. 

Florence came out from the portals of the augury still trying 


214 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


to decide, between Colonel Gray don and Mr. Cartyn, which was 
the dark man and which was only the man. As they were both 
rather dark, and both certainly men, this was not easy. 

She dashed out to her carriage in her own special rushing 
fashion, with her silks, as George Herbert most charmingly puts 
it, “whistling,” out into the damp evening air, east wind, and 
streaks of rain, when she ran headlong into two persons. In 
drawing back in apology she saw that one was Miss Jacques 
and behind her Mary Fresne ! 

For a second the horse-like countenance under the hearse- 
like toque of the elder lady simply glared shortsightedly at her. 

Then she said — 

“Why, Florence ! — ^you in town ?” 

“Why, it’s Harriet! Yes, I am. I wish I wasn’t. How do 
you do?” to Mary, who instictively drew back in the shadow. 

“Well, I’m glad to see it,” snapped Flarriet Jacques, “at last’ 
You’ve done a good bit of harm to some of us over here, by 
your goings on. Really, Florence, I know all about it, and it’s 
too bad. Fair play’s fair play. You know it is. No, you 
needn’t hide yourself, Mrs. Fresne!” She turned again to Flor- 
ence. “They behaved shockingly to her at the Hoydens, but 
she is kindly helping me now, as my secretary, Mrs. Fresne 
is very clever — very. Her help is a privilege. My dear Flor- 
ence, I’ve got a bone to pick with you. Without altogether 
meaning it you’ve done serious harm. But I'm going to have 
the matter put right,” 

“Oh, Flarriet, for goodness’ sake don’t begin scolding ! I’ve 
got worries enough. I’m going now to see a parson.” 

“A parson? Ah! Mr. Cartyn?” 

“Yes. Why?” 

“Well, I’ve no doubt he’s expecting you,” said Miss Jacques 
with fearful significance. 

“Expecting me? But ” 

“Yes. You will see.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Oh, never mind !” 

Before Florence could grasp her by the arm Miss Jacques and 
her companion had disappeared in the crowd and were lost to 
her. 

She stood in the rain gazing after their shadows in speechless 
horror. 


CHAPTER XXI 


She tumbled somehow into her carriage and gave the direction 
for St. Chad’s Vicarage. 

Lost! Betrayed I iMade use of by this man, by’ these peo- 
ple. 

She saw it all now. The presence of Mary with Miss Jacques 
proved it beyond a doubt. They were all of them in a con- 
spiracy against her. Was ever a woman so shockingly treated, 
so cruelly used? 

Driving home through the wintry night, she recollected Mqry ■ 
cold greeting, her attempt to hide herself, her refusal of the 
proffered hand. It all pointed to the one thing. Mary had 
been so friendly when she last saw her; now she was changed, 
she had learned the truth, and they were plotting to get her 
rights. Of course Cartyn was in it, must be in it; that was 
why he had gone to the lawyers. 

Doubtless he had made this arrangement for Mary to be with 
Harriet Jacques, and they were going to use their knowledge to 
reinstate her at any cost to Florence. Guilty as she was herself, 
prime schemer and betrayer and liar, Florence’s whole heart now 
rose in a passion of disappointment and indignation at Cartyn’s 
falsity, his deceit, his betra3'^al. She did not know it, but she 
had clung to the notion of his goodness with all her might and 
main. He, at least, had been to her a type of something noble*' 
and better than herself. He had himself taken in her confused 
spiritual imagination, the place of Christian science, of spiritual- 
ism, of palmistry even ; in a sense he had ousted them all by 
the force of his personality, and the fact that he stood to her 
for the living type of goodness. His fall, his utter, hopeless 
fall, was then the more hideous to her, and with it fell now her 
own vague desire for better things. To come home lonely 
and ill for this I 

“A conspiracy, a trio, against me !” she said. “A plot, formed 
out of my own voluntary confession, carefully laid against me. 


216 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


The meanness of it ! I will go to him and accuse him of what 
he has done. To think that I should come back with a desire 
to do something decent, something at least fair in this awful 
business, to find the man who has inspired me a traitor, a broken, 
wretched betrayer of others’ secrets, and of his own honour !” 

She burst into the ready tears that were her usual refuge, but 
her bitter disappointment was for once entirely free from sub- 
conscious melodrama. This time it was real misery that shook 
the gaudy figure in that stuffy brougham, the misery of one who 
yearns to find a foothold, and finds the rock slipping, shattering 
-under his feet. If poor Cartyn had needed convincing of the 
sacred responsibility of his office, he should have seen the picture 
of this, the worst of his disciples, weeping tears of blind misery 
for his fall. In those long, never-to-be-forgotten hours of his 
temptation, in the glorying hope of expedient advice from his 
fellows, in the wild, irrational demands of his yearning, eager 
love, he should have had presented to him suddenly the spectacle 
of the erring woman who had caused all his travail, weeping over 
his lost honour. 

And what would she do if the worst had happened? She 
had wild, confused ideas of writing to the bishop, of ruining 
him as a clergyman, of starting a lawsuit, a libel case, something, 
anything to defend herself from the publicity and exposure or 
her idle fault, which his betrayal would bring. She forgot, in 
her heat and rage and fear that the publicity of such a cause 
would be far worse than anything he could devise. 

' She leant out now in the snowy blast, and directed her coach- 
man to drive not to Darnley Gardens, but to St. Chad’s Vicarage • 
she would demand, she would insist on an interview. 

Arrived at the Glastonbury door, dimly lighted by its iron- 
framed lamp, she found on inquiry that the vicar was not in. 

“Are you sure?'’ she said. 

“Sure, m’m? Yes,” said the man. “This is his hour for 
the service of the Rescue Guild and workers. It’s early, be- 
cause those folk lives some distance and have got to get back 
in good hours.” 

“I see. Then he is at the church ?” 

“Yes, m’m.” 

“When will he be in — what time?” 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


217 


"Don’t know, m’m. He often has other meetings after a 
service like this?” 

Florence considered a moment, then decided that she would 
catch him more certainly by going round to the church herself. 
She must see him to-night. So she drove round to St. Chad’s 
sending her coachman home, and saying that she would take a 
cab after the service. He need not return. It was a dreadful 
night for the horses, she said. 

Then she went in. She had expected a half-lighted church, 
and a handful of persons — what had the vicarage servant said — 
Rescue people? — yes, something very serious. But to her amaze- 
ment the church was fully lighted up, and quite full of people- - 
the service had begun — and they were busily singing a rousing 
hymn with the assistance of a large choir. Her own bril- 
liant appearance, the effect of her costly dress, duly impressed 
the verger, who, against her will, insisted on parading her right 
up the middle of the big church amongst all the people, and 
putting her in a prominent seat. He had always an eye to 
decorative effect, even more marked than that directed towards 
main chances ; and mere whispering commands or appeals for 
an obscure seat by a well-dressed woman passed over him as 
so much useless chatter to be entirely disregarded. 

But Florence managed by creeping and climbing past several 
people to get herself into a darker corner by a pillar, from which 
she could see without being too clearly seen. People stared 
at her a little — they were mostly women — her red eyes con- 
trasted oddly with her sumptuous garb, and her presence at 
such a service looked rather odd. 1 hey themselves were mostly 
social workers of various sorts, or ladies sincerely interested in 
' women’s work, who took their places behind the lines of front 
IDews, where sat the women of the Resceu Guild, a grave band of 
heavy-faced beings in dark blue uniform. 

The warmth, the dazzling light, the swing of the tune for a 
moment or two dazzled Florence's senses after the storm out- 
side, but when she collected herself a little her eyes sought Car- 
tyn in the clergy stalls. To her disappointment he was not 
there. She saw the fair head of the finger-tipped Mr. Rene), 
the dark head of the belligerent Manxman, his fellow-curate, 
and in the vicar’s seat an elderly man, with iron-grey hair, 
stooping over his book. 


21g 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


“Some special preacher,” she said, annoyed now that she 
had come at all. However, she decided to leave before the 
sermon — she marked, with the tail of her eye, an easy way out 
to the side which would make her exit comparatively unnoticed. 

The last hymn before the sermon was drawing to a close ; she 
collected her various properties, her cloak, and many small pos- 
sessions, and was about to glide quietly out, when she glanced 
up and saw that the preacher was already ascending the pulpit 
.steps. Something in his walk, the stoop of his grey head ar- 
rested her attention, and she looked again — why, it was Cartyn 
himself ! She had not known him ! In utter amazement she 
sat down when the people did. and relinquished all idea of hur- 
rying away, her eyes fixed on the face of the man before her. 

How changed a face! It was not a year ago since she had 

last seen him, and he looked ten years older. What was it ^ 
His hair, then just sprinkled with iron-grey, was now all 
changed to that one colour; his face had fallen in and sharp- 
ened, his eyes seemed set in deeper sockets, and his mouth 

seemed to have tightened and hardened; but it was not these 
things only that made the difference. That gallant, almost jauntv' 
bearing that had been characteristic of him was gone, and in 
its place was a slow, deliberate gravity, almost preoccupation, 
that gave him the appearance of greatly added years. 

“He’s been ill,” thought Florence. “He never told me! 

Good gracious, what a change !” 

“Ugh! that he should look such a saint,” she mWitated ; 
man who can break his word for a woman ! He does look .1 
saint — it’s that thin face and that hair, I suppose. That is what 
they are all like, these parsons, when you really know them — 
dignified to look at, but how weak and false !” 

Then some words of his caught her ear — words about the 
sacred trusts of womanhood. He was dwelling on the entire 
meaning, the awful significance of a trust, what it may do to 
raise, how it may curse. He was giving examples. Florence’s 
anger leaped forth like a forked flame. That he should dare 
to talk so, he who was above all men false to his trust, to stand 
up there before those hundred of eager eyes and ears and give 
his false advice, his noble-sounding counsel with that on his 
own conscience! Her anger made her deaf to his words; they 
only came in upon her now and again like gusts of sound 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


215 


blown in forcibly by the wind. It was a long sermon, but 
it did not seem long to Florence, so busy was she concocting 
speech after speech that she would make him to his condemna- 
tion. To passionate natures there is a sort of rash, horrible 
enjoyment in a tornado of anger, a fiercely powerful elation, 
succeeded of course by the very blackness of depression and 
shame ; but for its little day a kind of* glory. Florence was 
feeling that now. She was glorying in the fact that she could 
and would injure, lacerate this man, expose his hypocrisy, re- 
veal him as he stood in all his wretched weakness. 

When at last it was all over, and the congregation swept out, 
leaving the hot church empty, she made application to see the 
vicar. She went right up to the vestry door in her fear of 
missing him, and was only kept out by Tolley’s sternly croaked 
advice to her to let the “poor dear choirmen disrobe in peace. ’ 
Then, when this was accomplished, she went in, Tolley showing 
her into the inner vestry and shutting the door. There she 
stood, face to face with Cartyn, who himself stood perfectly 
still gazing at her, utterly taken aback by her sudden and startling 
presence. He had not seen her in church, and now her unex- 
pected appearance stunned him, and all that she signified to 
him at that moment seemed to rush suddenly upon him with 
overwhelming force ; and he stood looking at her with his 
worn eyes and white face, still wearing his cassock, one hand 
on the table over which he had been bending to sign the offertory 
entry when she had burst in upon his privacy. 

Florence spoke first. “So you have broken your word, she 
said. Her accents fell low and haughtily, but her hands trem 
bled so violently that she could hardly hold her books or muff. 

“What are you saying?” he asked, his voice hollow and pained. 

“You know. I need not go any further. You promised so 
much — and now it is all, all broken, betrayed. I would not have 
believed it — even for her !” 

“What have I done? Will you tell me?” he said sternly, 
his voice rising. 1 his was a new thing, that Florence, who 
had been the cause of all his and Clary’s suffering, should take 
the line of accuser to him! 

“It is no good trying to hide it,” Florence went on, her 
words rushing furiously one over the other. “1 know most ot 
it. I can guess the rest. You have betr.aycd the secret 1 


220 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


put into your keeping to Mary Fresne’s friends, for the sakr 
of the love you have for her. Hush !” she put up her hand 
‘‘don’t try to contradict. I have just come from hearing my- 
self attacked, accused of this, by the woman you have chosen 
to help you, Harriet Jacques 1” 

“You are beside yourself,’ he said, but his face was very 
white. “Who is Harriet Jacques?’’ 

‘‘Who? You know her — you must.” 

“I do not. I have never seen her. What are you talking 
about, Mrs. Courtman?” 

“But,” gasped Florence, “you must know her — she can only 
have got it from you. She had Mary Frestrc with her " 

He suddenly interrupted her. 

“What?” he cried. “Mary Fresne — where — when? You have 

.seen her?” 

“Yes, yes. Just now — with Miss Jacques.” 

“Where — but where?” 

“Oh, out in Brompton Road. But you must know all about 
it, Mr. Cartyn. Mary is her secretary " 

"Then you have found her — you know where she lives?” He 
spoke excitedly. 

“Yes, of course — why ?” 

He sat down and laid his head on his arm on the table. 

“Thank God!” he said, breathing heavily. “Thank God!” 
Florence stood gazing at him. What was this ? He did not 
know where Mary lived? He was overcome at hearing she 
was “found,” as he called it. What did it all mean? 

“Didn’t you know where she lived?” she asked, but more 
gently. The bent head embarrassed her. Things seemed 
changing oddly. 

“Know? She has been lost for months,” he answered, with- 
out looking up. 

“Lost?” 

“She left here of her own accord — for my sake.” He had sat 
up now and was leaning back in his chair, his hands pushed 
out straight before him and gripping the table, his eyes luminous 
and staring straight before him, not at her. 

“For your sake, Mr. Cartyn? I don’t understand.” 

“You are no stranger to us. I loved her, and she me. We 
could not marry — she would not, with that about her neck. So 


A SHEPHERD OE KENSINGTON 


221 


she went away, poor, selfless mistaken girl, to save what she 
thought was my— position !” He laughed bitterly. “It has nearly 
killed me;” He said it simply enough, but his face bore out 
his words. 

“Was that — that I told you of, all that stood between?” Flor 
ence said, her voice lower. 

“All? Of course. What else could there be?” 

“But you went to Tallard & Tallard’s, the solicitors?” 

He looked up with a sort of grim smile. 

“I know I did. Why?” 

“But you surely ” 

“Ah, is that your thought ! Well, I will confess. I went, 
in my misery at her loss, to ask for her address. They would 
not give it to me.” 

“Well ?” 

“That was a black moment. I can’t say any more. I can 
only thank God, that at such a moment, I held my tongue. I 
did hold it. I said nothing. That’s all. Well?” 

“You held your tongue? You did nothing — even then?" 
“No.” 

“And you didn’t tell — in 3^our own defence and hers?” 

§■■ “How could I, I tell you? You had tied my hands.” He 
got up now and went and stood by the fireplace. 

Florence gazed at him now, her eyes growing larger as the 
truth dawned upon her at last. 

“But — you could have justified her!” 

“I could — with dishonour.” He was looking in the fire. 

“By telling the truth to the trustees.” 

“Yes.” 

“But, surely — that time when you were actually in the pres- 
ence of the solicitors you did something, said something? I 
have seen them myself. I wanted them to tell me what had 
passed, but they would not. Their manner was so odd. T 
felt sure ” 

“Did you? Their manner may have been odd because they 
had strange recollections of my visit ! I remember I went there 
and fairly stormed at them, telling them of her poverty, and 
the miserable life she was living. I don’t suppose they thought 
I was quite sane. I wasn’t.” 

“But did you only go there for her address?” 


222 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


“No — shall I tell you? I went to betray you. That is my 
condemnation. I was capable of getting so near to it as that ! 
Mary gave me a letter she found from you to her husband. I 
meant to show it to the trustees, and tell all I knew. I sank 
to that. How I was only just saved from it, Heaven alone 
knows !” 

“My letter? And when I heard from Colonel Graydon tha. 
you had been to them, and he worried me about her money, was 
that all he meant?” 

“That she was starving? Yes, that was all. I told them 
to tell him.” 

“I see. Then that was why he w'rote to me as he did ! H j 
simply meant that he wanted to find out some way to help her.” 

Cartyn bowed. “I suppose so. I do not know him, and of 
course never wrote to him. But I believed that he would hea^* 
of my visit to the lawyers.” 

“But, good heavens !” said Florence, her voice breathless, and 
throwing down all her little clattering treasures, books, purse."', 
chatelaines on the table in her impatience ; “I cannot understand 
it all, all at once, I cannot, indeed. I have just come back to 
England. You wrote to me about her. I was bitterly to blame 
that I did nothing then. I admit that. But, oh, I never knew 
— believe me when I say I never even guessed the awful trouble 
I should bring upon you. I might well be miserable! You two! 
You two! Good heavens,, what a struggle! And Mary poor and 
ill!” 

“Yes, Mary poor and ill,” he repeated quietly, 

“You could bear that?” 

“I bore it.” 

Florence suddenly threw out both her hands. 

“Oh, you couldn’t have loved her !” she cried. 

He was looking back at her steadily. 

“What do you say?” he said *in stern accents. “I couldn''’- 
have loved her? I couldn’t have loved her? I who would 
have died for her ! Can’t you see I’m a man broken by sleep 
less nights and hopeless questions for her sake? Can’t you tell 
what it has cost me? Bah! If you can’t what’s the use of 
talking of it !” 

Florence drew back, shuddering a little at the awful earnest- 
ness of his words and the look of his tense, worn face. 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


223 


“Love would have gone to the rescue,” she muttered dully. 
“After all— if you had betrayed— it would have been quite nat- 
ural and human.” 

Love craved to go to the rescue, as you put it ; love struggled 
to do that in the night. But love is higher than that; it has 
its altars. I could have saved Mary if I would, but only to 
lose her. Look here, Mary loved me for what 1 should have 
been. For her sake I kept to her belief in me. Now,” he 
looked at her from under his brows doggedly, “what have you 
to say?” 

“Oh, don’t look at me so ! Oh, do forgive me ! Is love like 
that? Is love so great?” 

“Hers is,” he said. 

Florence wrung her hands together as she stood before him. 

“The whole trouble began through love,” she said, “and 
jealousy.” 

“Yes.” 

“You have shown me love and heroism." 

"She has,” he said. 

“I’m trying to understand your part in it. I can't take il 
in all at once. If you did nothing wrong why are you so 
unhappy about it all? You talk as though you were guilty.’ 

He threw up his head and laughed shortly. 

“Why do I take it to heart? Don’t you see that when you 
and I first met, Mrs. Courtman, you confessed to me a sin 
that I despised but could not comprehend? Don’t you see now 
that within a year of that day I have learnt what that sin 
meant? That, as nearly as possible, I have committed it my- 
self? The sin of betrayal. As it is I cannot say ‘nearly’ even, 
for I did. I have betrayed you to Mary. It is odd that within 
one year our positions are reversed, and in this very vestry I 
am confessing to you !” 

He looked at her with the odd trick of half-shutting his eyes. 
His face was infinitely sad and drawn in spite of it. 

But Florence’s hard, worried eyes filled with tears. She 
looked at him, standing there by the empty fireplace. His cas- 
sock, somehow as a sign of his office, made his words seem 
more humble. 

“Oh no, no, but indeed you need not.” 

“I prefer to. It makes us nearer together. It is you who 


224 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


have helped me. You have taught me that I am human. You 
have taken down my conceit finally. Shake hands — we are 

the same sort of beings, you and I, and we will try to help 

cme another.” 

I'lorence went to him and put her hand in his. In that mo- 
ment her selfishness slipped from her. His unselfishness had 
broken it down — a thing all his precepts had not been able to 
do. Just in that same moment he became the mighty power 
that a year ago he had imagined himself to be — with what re- 
sults ! Standing against his vestry mantelpiece, holding ner 

hand and looking down at her with his worn dark face, in the 

act of offering her his own humiliation, as he thought, he held, 
for the first time in his life, the power to help her and lead 
her to something better. 

The confident olficial was no more. This indeed was a man — 
sinful, kindl}^ ashamed. At last truly a priest in that he had 
learned to reverence the struggles of unhappy humanity, the 
highest priesthood. 

Florence pulled away her hand and pushed back her veil. 
She gave herself a huge shake, like a spaniel coming out of the 
water — almost a struggle. She disarranged the tulle strings 
unconsciously. Eagerly she said — 

‘T am an unhappy wretch. I am very sorry. I don’t want 
the Church’s forgiveness in the way I did, any more. 1 want 
to do something — as nice — as you have. Yes, really, I used 
to be so sorry, I cried. Now I can’t cry. I want to do things, 
not talk any more. Good, daring things : strong, kind things. 
Do you remember, a year ago, you and I stood here just where 
we are standing now? (only I was in violet — I was so religious 
last Lent) do you remember?” , 

‘T do. Yes.” 

“I couldn’t get any peace, and you said that there was no 
peace without reparation.” 

“I did.” 

“Well then, there is no peace. You are right. I have tried 
everything. Listen,” she said, putting up her hand as he was 
going to interrupt her, “I am not talking about bridge luck 
now — I’m talking about serious things. I must. Tm talking- 
in the presence of a good, true man.” 

“Oh, please, i'drs. Courtman ” 


A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 


22S 


*‘No, I must tell you. I say you’ve taught me what unselfish- 
ness really is— you and Mary. When I see what others can 
do and suffer through me, I’m not— not quite such a miserable 
wretch but that it makes me at least feel ashamed of my own 
part. Will you accept it now”— her voice went lower, and 
her breast heaved painfully — ”if I make the reparation? If I 
write out a statement for the trustees — to-night?” 

He came across to her, his face flushed at the spectacle of her 
struggling generosity. 

“You must act on your own conscience — you must do nothing 
for me — as a man.” 

“Mr. Cartyn, you must learn to take the good you can get 
out of — us sinners ; not to muddle it up by fancy terms. If 1 
have seen — see God in you, and — yes — in Mary’s unselfishness 
and courage, you must not quarrel with me. We cannot all 
be so very churchy, you know. We live in one another, if 
we’re worth anything. I am sorry, honestly, for this miserabl,' 
business. But I shall only make the reparation because — be- 
cause, now you’re a real person, not only a clergyman, it seems 
easier to be good, somehow. It is so nice of you to be human, 
like me. So I’ll try to be heroic, like you.” 

He took her hand in silence. 

“Come home with me,” she added, “and help me to write it 
out. We will do it together.” 

“And you have come into some money?” said Miss Jacques. 
“Well, that is very fortunate.” 

“Yes — well, some has reverted to me,” said Mary, her eyes 
shining, her face beaming and looking girlish again in the glory 
of her news, as she sat in those muddly “chambers” and told 
it to Miss Jacques over the litter of MSS. and the shoes and 
treasures and the cigarette ash. 

“I have heard from the lawyers, and it has all come right — 
I mean come to me most wonderfully.” 

“Then perhaps I need say no more to that Florence Court - 
man,” said her friend casually. “I mean about that letter of 
Lady Jiberene’s about you that she never answered. It was 
an unjust action. It caused you endless trouble, casting such 
a slight upon you. It was even a very rude way to treat the 
monster Jiberene, Even women like that should be replied 


uv^l 9 


226 A SHEPHERD OF KENSINGTON 

to. Courtesy demands it, however annoying they are. I told 
her 1 would get justice in the matter that night we met her. 
If you still would like, my dear ” 

“Oh no — oh, please,’’ said Mary. “It is most kind of you, 
dear Miss Jacques, but it doesn’t in the least matter. I’d rather 
no more was said about it. Lady Jiberene has forgotten it all 
by now, or will forget it.” 

“Oh, certainly, now you are to enjoy a large income. That 
will be quite in her style.” 

“Oh, 1 am not likely to see her,” said Mary; “but if 1 do, 
I need not be cross with her. After all, she always liked my 
respectable side, didn’t she? And now I am proved respecta- 
ble, she will really rejoice.” 

“Quite so,” said Miss Jacques. “But, you know, 1 liked you 
best when you weren’t, didn’t I ?” 

“You did, in deed. But I hope you won’t cut me when I’m 
a vicar’s wife?” 

“No; not as the vicar appears to be a chivalrous person.” 

There was a sound of eager footsteps on the stairs, and the 
door opened, and Cartyn came into the room, his eyes shining, 
his hands held out before him. 

“James !” cried a rapturous voice. 

“Mary — sweetheart !” There was a whirling meeting* 

“I’ll cut you for the present,” said Miss Jacques, retiring from 
the room with the air of the Louis Phillipe beauty in pink silk. 
“To two, cuts are kindnesses,” 


THE END 




A 

Shepherd 

of 

Kensington 



By 

Mrs. Baillie Saunders 


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